First, the Quantified Self. Now, the Over-Quantified Self

I had some questions, and Fard Johnmar had some answers. Our recent Q&A involved the new book he has co-authored with Rohit Bhargava called ePatient 2015: 15 Surprising Trends Changing Healthcare.  Their book focuses on how a range of technology-influenced trends may or may not impact patients, including intriguing chapters like Multicultural Misalignment (when developers don’t account for diverse populations when making health tech innovations), Healthy Real Estate (the importance of healthy communities), or – my particular favourite – The Over-Quantified Self (the impact of too much health data).    Continue reading

Self-tracking tech revolution? Not so fast…

When the report called Tracking for Health was released last month, media headlines announced:

“Over Two-Thirds Track Health Indicators!”

This statistic, borrowed from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project’s report, referred to the 69 per cent of people who say they keep track of things like their weight, exercise, heart rate, food, stress or other health indicators. It also, however, includes almost half of self-reporting trackers who, according to Pew’s Susannah Fox, track these health indicators for themselves or others  – but only in their heads.

Surprisingly, very few headlines ran the real news from the report:

“Only 21% Use Technology to Self-Track!”  Continue reading