The commercial success of wearable health devices is a testament to the public's appetite for self-improvement. People want to be fitter and stronger Top 8 Fitness Gadgets To Help You Get Fit Top 8 Fitness Gadgets To Help You Get Fit With the ever-increasing emergence of wearable technology, the Internet of Things, and smart gadgets, now it's always easier to get fit. Read more . They want more energy and better sleep. They understandably want to be and feel healthier.
However, despite the number of wearable devices reaching 170 million in 2017, there is still no scientific evidence to prove their effectiveness. But it's too soon to give up hope.
The idea behind wearable health devices (and other smart devices). 6 Best Home Fitness Products That Talk to the Internet. 6 Best Home Fitness Products Talking the Internet. Fitness devices that talk to the Internet to stay motivated, track progress, and help you improve your fitness habits. Read More) is that by having access to certain data, we can make more informed decisions about our health. Using this data to change our behavior Develop Good Daily Habits With 7 Painless Tools &Guides Develop Good Daily Habits With 7 Painless Tools &Guides You need to establish very specific habits for yourself if you're going to make them work. Discover seven great websites and apps to inspire building your habit. Read More We can reverse the undesirable symptoms. We can make decisions in real time based on the flow of data that we offer.
So far, the devices that the industry has developed are impressive. Now we can easily collect data about our sleep. Can an app really help you sleep better? Can an app really help you sleep better? I've always been a bit of a sleep experimenter, for much of my life I've kept a meticulous dream journal and studied everything I could about sleep in the process. There is a... Read More We can track our stress, galvanic skin response, temperature, and the calories we burn. All of this data can be synced to The Cloud, with glorious graphs and charts giving you what the industry likes to call actionable insight .
However, when we look at the bigger picture, the devices currently on the market are embryonic. We'll be looking down on this health tracking moment very soon 10 Excel Templates To Track Your Health And Fitness 10 Excel Templates To Track Your Health And Fitness Read More As Democrats Look Down On the Tea Party. The evolution of wearable technology is brisk.
Google will soon release a contact lens that tracks blood sugar levels. The sensors will be printed directly on our skin. The nanosensors will race around the bloodstream looking for cancer. Your sweat will give more than you can imagine..
But if all this investment and hype fails to create a healthier population, what's the point?
If I tell a spending addict about his $10,000 in debt to the bank, there's nothing here to stop that person from buying the next cashmere jacket he likes. If I tell a struggling student that they received a direct Fs last quarter, nothing indicates that the student will receive better grades in the next quarter. That's because the data itself cannot change the behavior .
This is why a third of customers stop using their wearable device after just six months. MIT anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll suggests that this time frame is even shorter. Without positive change, viewing the data quickly becomes exhausting and fruitless. Who can blame users for giving up their new habit? How to create a new habit when it seems too difficult to follow? How to Form a New Habit When It Seems Too Hard to Maintain Habits don't form overnight. Every year, we make these resolutions that require major changes. If you want a new habit, you have to be prepared for the pitfalls and how to overcome them. Read More
The problem here is not the data. If we want wearable health technology to work as we do, we need the actionable insights that data provides. But actionable intuition alone is not enough. We also need actionable motivators . Tim Cook failed to see this when he launched the Apple Watch, promising that he would. “Help us all stay fit throughout the day. iOS 8 turns your iPhone into a personal health tracker. iOS 8 turns your iPhone into a personal health tracker. The new Apple Watch will turn your iPhone into a revolutionary device for managing your health and fitness. . Read more ". No, Tim, he won't. Not without actionable motivators. Better data does not require better behavior.
Once the industry can nail down those two ingredients - information and Motivation to change behaviour:then wearable health technology will reach new frontiers. We will finally be able to democratize and decentralize healthcare. We will move closer to acting on the causes of diseases instead of the symptoms. We will have access to truly individualized treatments. The medical industry will stop being reactive and become proactive..
What these action motivators might look like gives us a glimpse of what we might expect from an industry that is determined to reshape healthcare.
Currently, data collection depends on you remembering to charge your device. To put it on your wrist. Turn it on. This is pretty simple, but it only takes a couple of days of forgetfulness for you to think "What's the point of?". This happens to a lot of wearable device users, and it's a big problem for the industry.
The remedy is to make this a “set it and forget it” kind of technology. Whatever device you decide to employ should create almost zero friction with your life. This includes automatic synchronization with The Cloud. And it also means never having to charge your device. With ECG and RF sensors, this shouldn't be too far in the future.
Once health data collection becomes totally painless and largely automated, the next hurdle is enabling that data to drive positive behavior change.
The tech industry has tried many approaches so far. One of the most frequent is gamification, where the behavior change process is seen as a game in which you can, for example, earn points. Unfortunately, for more difficult changes like trying to be gluten-free, avoiding sugar, going to the gym 4 times a week, or quitting smoking How to Kill Bad Habits with Bad Habits in the New Year How to Kill Bad Habits with Bad Habits in the New Year Bad habits can't be that bad if they can help you in some way. Defeat them at their own game by pitting them against each other. Read More
The same problems come with positive reinforcement. Simply receiving “accessories” or likes for an app can work for the minority, especially when the change is relatively small. But when it comes to making more significant change, a large proportion of the population needs something more forceful.
The most promising theory in this case seems to be the introduction of fear. Fortunately, fear is a very broad term. The threat of fear, therefore, could include; guilt, shame, humiliation, embarrassment, self-deception, frustration, and of course physical pain.
To successfully present “fear” in this market, that fear must be a real risk that the user believes will be come true if you don't make, or at least try to make, those behavior changes. In Kim Witte's scholarly article on this topic, she explains that the fear parameters needed to increase the probability of behavior change are:
For efficient behavior change to occur, all four of these conditions must be present. For example, when a patient is told of the risk of diabetes when she consumes too much sugar, she often will not. truly he thinks they are susceptible to that threat, so he continues to eat sugar. Often, it is only when they are told that they have early diabetes symptoms that the feeling of authentic susceptibility arises and therefore they are motivated to change their eating habits How to Use Spark's Microhabits and Massive Personal Change How to Use Spark's Microhabits and Massive Personal Change Creating new habits is hard. Habits are usually built over weeks or months of repetition, and the motivation is the challenge. When the going gets tough, microhabits can go a long way. Read more.
As some examples of fears and risks that could be used in the wearable health market:
Only when these two aspects are rectified, we will be able to see broader benefits from the wearable health device market.
When the population no longer needs to think about the collection of your data, a major obstacle to making use of that data is removed. In this scenario, a doctor can take a look at your data with the swipe of a finger. This easy access to real-time, individualized health data enables more accurate treatment than ever before. Furthermore, the ability to receive early and automatic alerts of any suspicious results could save millions of lives and prevent immense suffering.
When it comes to people taking ownership of their own data and using that data to change their own behavior, a strong motivator is needed. As I mentioned earlier, positive reinforcement and gamification are not strong enough solutions. Avoiding fear is a stronger motivation than seeking pleasure. Therefore, the introduction of a negative, a real risk, seems to be the most promising solution.
Once that risk or fear is introduced, we can pick and choose the behaviors that will lead to the most positive impact on our lives and health. In a sense, we will force ourselves to make those changes, realizing that human beings are fickle creatures after all.
Should more automation and risk (or “fear”) be introduced to the wearable health market, would you find it easier to make positive changes based on your data? Do you think there is a better alternative? And do you think these devices can actually make us healthier or just turn us into paranoid hyperchondriacs?
