Intended for medical use, these apps leverage a smartphone’s GPS location tools, accelerometer, and light and sound sensors to record movements, social interactions, the frequency and timing of phone usage, and speech behavior. They use these data to create a profile, and then train the tools to track behavior in real time in order to alert the user – or doctors – about the potential need for intervention (take a certain medication or change some behavior.) Like any tool, there are uses and misuses. Wondering when we’ll see the first health plan require you to turn your phone on so others can track other behaviors – eating, smoking, uttering hate speech, or indulging in activities not thought to be acceptable among the politically-correct orthodoxy.
Nov 212014