Technology like Fitbits, Apple Watches, and other products like them are potentially being used for much more than their intended purpose to help with the Coronavirus pandemic. The idea behind turning to these technologies is for a few reasons. First, it can track populations pretty easily like peoples locations and their movement patterns. This is allows researches to pinpoint where outbreaks are more likely to occur. Another use of these products is giving people a better idea of their conditions. Certain applications can be put on things like the Apple Watch that can track temperature, heart rate, oxygen levels, and coughing events. This can give more people a window into the severity of their condition and lessen the burden on hospitals if people can track themselves at home and know when it is necessary to go to the hospital. Additionally it could give people who do not realize their symptoms a better idea of the reality of their health.
Their are a lot of possibilities for these products to help with the coronavirus from many different standpoints. The main takeaways is this can significantly help medical researchers, hospitals and doctors during this time. This ties into the Internet of Things in that we are using these technologies to collect data and transfer it seamlessly. This is collecting data on our locations and movements as well as basic medical information.
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2020/04/03/wearableslikeapple-watch-fitbit-may-play-coronavirus-detection-role/5111959002/
Personally, I think that it’s interesting that companies came up with a way to be able to detect the coronavirus and gather data just by using fitness technology. In the a related article I found, it talks about how it is using these fitness technologies can allow the companies to collect data to see who is staying indoors and who isn’t. Although these apps are helpful to possibly detect early signs of Covid-19 and seeing if people stay home, it also is showing that there is a spike of people feeling increased anxiety which could affect their health. The data that they have found is that people are finally starting to listen and allow themselves to stay inside, but if they really feel necessary they can call their doctor unless it’s an emergency. My only concern is that how do we know that these companies are making these people aware that they are collecting data? In the article it says that Evidation Health is only collecting data from those who have given permission but what about other companies?
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/27/evidation-pulse-study-moving-less-sleeping-more-quarantine.html
I think this is an interesting case since fitness trackers can harvest a lot of data from an individual. While this data has the potential to do a lot of good especially in this example with being able to detect the Corona Virus using bio-metric information, it also raises a lot of security concerns especially when so much data is being harvested. You specifically mentioned location data being used to track movements patterns but an individual’s location data is not something people enjoy being shared. A fitness tracker is something people tend to keep on them all day so the security concerns about the data they keep is very serious.