{"id":20186,"date":"2022-12-01T13:02:10","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T13:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/01\/smart-health-tracking-isnt-smart-enough\/"},"modified":"2022-12-01T13:02:10","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T13:02:10","slug":"smart-health-tracking-isnt-smart-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/01\/smart-health-tracking-isnt-smart-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Health Tracking Isn\u2019t Smart Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Fitbit
Joe Fedewa \/ How-To Geek<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the phone in your pocket to expensive smartwatches, we have the ability to gather tons of health and fitness information. The problem is current health tracking is simply not smart enough to make that data useful.<\/p>\n

Health Tracking on an Island<\/h2>\n

Smart devices have allowed us to easily track things that would previously have required specialized medical equipment. You can walk into Best Buy and spend $100 or less on a device\u00a0that can record your heart rate every second of the day<\/a>. That\u2019s pretty amazing.<\/p>\n

Heart rate, of course, is just one of many things we can now track with phones and wearables. You can also track your sleep, daily steps, water consumption, diet, calories, workouts, body composition, weight, and more. If you really dive in, you can learn a lot about your body.<\/p>\n

The problem is the current state of health tracking is very segregated. Sure, you can track all the things mentioned above, but that data mostly stays isolated on its own little islands. That greatly limits how useful it can be to you.<\/p>\n

Health Data Needs Context<\/h2>\n
\"Fitbit
Okay\u2026what do I do with this?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The critical component that\u2019s missing from smart health tracking is context. Sleep tracking is a perfect example of this problem<\/a>. Wearing an Apple Watch while you sleep<\/a> isn\u2019t actually helpful if the data doesn\u2019t have context.<\/p>\n

If you track sleep like most people, you probably wake up, look at the handy little graph of your sleep cycles, utter something about how you need more deep sleep, and then do absolutely nothing to make that happen. How could you? That chart doesn\u2019t provide any actionable information.<\/p>\n

To make meaningful changes, you\u2019d need to figure out what\u2019s causing the lack of deep sleep. Do you sleep worse when you don\u2019t get enough steps? Are certain foods before bedtime disrupting your sleep? Are high stress levels making it hard to fall asleep?<\/p>\n

All the health data in the world isn\u2019t very helpful if it\u2019s always isolated. We need to be able to integrate the data and make meaningful correlations.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> You’re Tracking Your Sleep Wrong<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Smarter Health Tracking<\/h2>\n

Sleep tracking is just one area that could benefit from smarter health and fitness data. The same problem exists in tracking workouts, weight, stress, and more. We have the ability to record and track tons of data, but the apps aren\u2019t helping us put it to good use.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say I track my sleep and how much water I drink every day\u2014two pretty simple things to do with Samsung Health. When I go for a run<\/a>\u2014also using Samsung Health<\/a>\u2014it would be great if the app could show me how my performance is worse when I sleep poorly or don\u2019t drink enough water.<\/p>\n

My situation isn\u2019t even a difficult one\u2014I\u2019m putting all the data into the same app and it\u2019s still not being used to make connections. What if you track health and fitness with a few different apps? Apple Health<\/a> and Google\u2019s Health Connect<\/a> seem<\/em> like they might help with this, but the problem is the same.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s Health Connect allows apps to share information between each other. Your daily calories can sync from MyFitnessPal to Samsung Health, but that\u2019s essentially the same as if you recorded it in Samsung Health to begin with. The data is still not being used to show\u00a0correlations.<\/p>\n

Right now, it\u2019s up to us to do the legwork and find the connections that we can use to make meaningful changes. Even the best fitness trackers<\/a> aren\u2019t smart enough to do it for us. It\u2019s long overdue for \u201csmart\u201d health tracking to make this easier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n