The Perfect Tracker.

I know that so far I haven't done any reviews of health trackers, but I have a good reason.  I just started using one and I am not ready to do a review yet. I purchased a Fitbit One about a week ago I am not going to do my review of the Fitbit One right now but, since wearing it I have been thinking about the perfect tracker and what it would do.

The perfect tracker would be forgettable, but not be forgotten.  Compliance in medicine is one of the plagues of being a doctor.  It doesn't matter if we prescribe the right medicine, give patients the right diet to follow or exercises to do, if the patient does not comply none of our effort will be fruitful.  A forgettable tracker would be so much part of someone that they wouldn't even have to think about putting it on because it would be part of something they use every day.

Now this might freak some people out, but I think the best way would be to actually have the tracker built into the body somehow.  Even now, I don't understand why pacemakers don't tell patients more and why they don't transmit information to doctors more easily.  However, since most of us won't want something built into the body, I think a watch is most likely to win as the mode of choice.

The perfect tracker would give you blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature, as well as sleep patterns and activity.  Vital signs are vital, and knowing your own vital signs could be life saving as well as inspiring for better health.

The perfect tracker would be part of a huge network of data that is constantly increasing and getting smarter.  Just like Google Search gets smarter the more data Google's servers hold.  Health analytics and community health can make leaps and bounds with innumerable points of data and algorithms that become smarter over time, signaling to doctors and consumers who is just about to get sick and what might be causing it.

I have only tested one tracker for a week but I basically know the specs and technology behind every tracker I have heard of and I have not heard of a tracker that can do these things.  When that tracker comes around I think we are in for some exciting times in health.  I also believe we will see a new specialty for physicians.  It will be mobile health.  Doctors will be making house calls again, driving around town checking on the those whose trackers are signaling upcoming danger.