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Microsoft's Health-y Patent Appetite
theodp writes "This week's USPTO patent application disclosures included a trifecta of scary health-related 'inventions' from Microsoft. For starters, Microsoft envisions seeing Kids' Personal Health Records Fed Into Video Games, where they can be used to 'regulate and/or prescribe an individual's behavior while playing electronic games.' Next up is Centralized Healthcare Data Management, which describes how employees' health habits can be 'monitored, tracked or otherwise discovered' so employers can 'incentivize a user for an act or penalize for an omission to act.' Finally, there's Wearing Health on Your Sleeve, which describes a sort of high-tech Scarlet Letter designed to tip off 'doctors, potential dates, etc.' about your unhealthy behavior by converting information — 'number of visits to the gym, workout activities, frequency of workouts, heart rate readings, blood pressure statistics, food consumption, vitamin intake, etc.' — into a visual form so that others can see the data 'on mechanisms such as a mood ring, watch, badge, on a website etc.'"
As the submission says, keep in mind that these are patent applications, filed the last week of 2008, not issued patents.
Do you remember the new 3d-scanning game interface that MS made? Can you link now the dots? And honestly, when i heard about their new visual interface, i was impressed, i wish i had one.....but now i am scared, and would never buy one.
Well now this will give Microsoft Bob something to play when he's not on his Kin.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Is that governments will be purchasing and mandating this crap. And lifestyle management will become a preeminent response to the fact when universal healthcare fails to bend the cost curve in the right direction. And all your immoral sloth and twinkie eating will take the blame for the failures of the central planners who will be rewarded for their failure by being given more and more control to crawl up your ass.
Wearing a Microsoft product to advertise your "health" (as defined by Microsoft) to others would indicate severe brain damage.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
There's a leaked picture of the designs Microsoft will use to display that information. The colored triangles are a great way to convey information readable at a distance.
Rumor is Microsoft is cutting expenses on that project by recycling IBM code from the 1940s designed for a government client that wanted to track public health.
You can't take the sky from me...
> a sort of high-tech Scarlet Letter designed to tip off 'doctors, potential dates, etc.' about your unhealthy behavior by converting information -- 'number of visits to the gym, workout activities, frequency of workouts, heart rate readings, blood pressure statistics, food consumption, vitamin intake, etc.' -- into a visual form so that others can see the data 'on mechanisms such as a mood ring, watch, badge, on a website etc.'"
Oh yeah! I say bring it on!
While most people sweat it out in the gym and deny themselves delicious food, all of us geeks will be proudly displaying our hacked super-health in glaring neon across our bloated bellies.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Ahh, I see. The idea is to patent an implant that goes in our foreheads, with the number "666." on it. The same implant can be used as a credit card, etc.
I don't think this idea can be patented. I think I remember reading about it in an old book, somewhere.
Don't people already do the Wearing Health on Your Sleeve?
http://noadventure.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/scooter.jpg
The Blue Screen of Death becomes literal!
The summary is a strange reading of these applications. The "Wearing Your Health on your Sleeve" invention, for example, has two apparent target markets. The first is unreliable patients (e.g., an unconscious patient or those with Alzheimer's or other mental health issues that make it difficult for the patient to accurately self-report medical information). This is basically a fancy version of a MedicAlert bracelet.
The second apparent target market is dating. But far from being used to report your 'unhealthy behavior' to potential dates, the target market here would be healthy people that want a way to advertise that information. The application doesn't even contain the word 'unhealthy' or phrase 'unhealthy behavior'; that was inserted by the submitter.
The "Kids' Personal Health Records Fed Into Video Games" application describes an extension of something that Wii Fit already does. In Wii Fit, your Mii (i.e., your in-game avatar) is given a larger waistline if the player is overweight. This will likely see use in connection with Microsoft's Kinect product. I don't see anything particularly scary here. In fact, it seems like a good way to make an exercise-type game both more immersive and better target both areas for improvement and avoid areas of difficulty (e.g., the invention could also be used to ensure that a character played by a paraplegic is given tasks that can be completed without moving ones legs).
The "Centralized Healthcare Data Management" application is a variation on existing incentive systems for employees who, for example, quit smoking.
Remember, too, that these are just patent applications. They aren't issued patents, and furthermore a patent is not a business plan. There's no particular reason to think that Microsoft or any other company is going to use these inventions to evil ends. If you see a patent for poison, for example, you shouldn't assume the inventor is planning to murder someone. They probably just want to sell pesticide.
To me, the idea that people are thinking of this kind of thing is what this story is about. Not that they might get a patent for it.
employers SHOULD NOT penalize workers for stuff out side of the job and THIS JUST pushes the health tied to your job BS.
80+ hour work weeks lead to fast food eating / quick snacks.
so you have go to there gym? and not your own / city park run ones? Nice way to tie your health care to a over priced gym vs a cheaper city run one.
Well, patents are a legal right to prevent someone doing something - they stem from royal privileges handed out by the king to his cronies as "letters patent" (open letters like "to whom it may concern; if you try to compete with my buddy McSlimeball of the Guild of Slimeballs, I the king will fuck your shit up". So maybe microsoft are only patenting to prevent people doing such creepy shit. haha.
How many people are too stupid to remember that health records are private for a reason?
I am inventing methods for "Wearing Evil on Your Sleeve", which describes a sort of high-tech Scarlet Letter designed to tip off 'potential dates, employees, friends, stock holders, media, etc.' about your unethical behavior by converting information — ' Inventing things to make average people's live difficult for no reason, number of visits by escorts, unreasonably hiking employee benefits costs, frequency of spending more than you pay your top employees for a year on a weekend vacation, destroying entire ecosystems with impunity, etc.' — into a visual form so that others can see the data 'on mechanisms such as a mood ring, watch, badge, on a website etc.
Now now, we all know that personal liberties and the right to enjoy oneself have absolutely nothing to do with capitalism, and therefore have no place in our society. After all, how can a business possibly turn a profit if its employees are smokers or enjoy a few drinks after work?
Palm trees and 8
Such as, oh I dunno, number of chairs thrown across the room.
Your health problems and their likely connection to your unhealthy lifestyle are already painfully obvious to anyone who spends enough time with you for their opinion to matter. Why be so paranoid about disclosure? I am much more concerned about someone stealing my financial data or my employer taking undue interest in my facebook postings.
I think the first patent is great ("Kids Health"), although I've seen the basic idea discussed many times online and don't think it should be approved.
Remember that early patents are a land grab designed to prevent someone else from stealing the basic premise of the idea.
In this case, the basic premise is that if you are fat, then when playing GTA, WOW... your character will be slow. Instead of sitting in front of a TV/computer spending too many hours grinding out lots of short missions to build up your characters stats, go out running or go to the gym and build up your own stats. Then your character will be faster, stronger...
So back to the patent land grab, Microsoft's primary concept is probably something that monitors your current health, speed... as you play the game to determine your character's stats. Your physical activity while playing the game (similar to some Wii sports games) determines your character's performance. Someone looking to get around this patent might determine your current physical fitness "outside the game" to be captured in an electronic medical record - something Microsoft doesn't want to let someone do to get around the patent.
Could Microsoft have filed for patents that were any more big brother-ish. I mean having people disclose their health to their potential dates or having employees have to disclose ever aspect of their health to their employer.
I guess Microsoft hasn't designed a system in which 'a camera hangs around your neck and records every aspect of your life' (like the truman show)...oh wait they already did that. http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/sensecam/
To me, the idea that people are thinking of this kind of thing is what this story is about. Not that they might get a patent for it.
Does Microsoft know something we don't?
Maybe Microsoft actually got to find out what was in the bill before it passed, rather than Pelosi's insistence that regular citizens would find out what was in it after it passed.
Regardless of precisely when MS knew what was in the healthcare act, they probably sat some creative software people down with a bullet-point list of items from the act and brainstormed some possible niche software applications based on things actually in the bill.
What's creepy isn't the software apps that MS is trying to patent, it's that they have to have had some reason to think that at least some of this stuff may actually make them some coin from the federal government by being used in some twisted government healthcare initiatives based on what's in the government healthcare plan.
' -- into a visual form so that others can see the data 'on mechanisms such as a mood ring, watch, badge, on a website etc.'"
How about having those Jews start wearing yellow Stars of David too, while we're at it?
I'd post further, but being the July 4th weekend, I've got to get started deep-frying those Twinkies and balls of butter rolled in cinnamon and powdered sugar for the neighborhood cookout. The kids love 'em! The first batch should be ready right after the deepfried-lard-eating contest.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
What's creepy isn't the software apps that MS is trying to patent, it's that they have to have had some reason to think that at least some of this stuff may actually make them some coin from the federal government by being used in some twisted government healthcare initiatives based on what's in the government healthcare plan.
It's also possible that they've extrapolated different scenarios of what the future of "health regulation" might be, and these patent applications are a kind of a bet. It doesn't cost much to file a patent, compared to what you can do with it if you manage to have it granted, and then lord it over others (ask IBM...). Seeing the Orwellian laws that are being passes all over the world, it seems to me that they're extrapolating in the right direction. I just hope that patents like these won't be granted, since they describe little more than ideas, which aren't *supposed* to be patentable (and yes, I know that reality has proven otherwise).
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Reall-y? Is there an-y reason the y should be hy-phenated?
So if this patent is granted, you may still use a sleeve-worn communication device without paying royalties, but only to communicate non-infringing subject matters? Sexual orientation is OK, but familial disposition to disease infringes? RFID already exists, and implements claim 1 generically, not just for health data. This patent does not claim or describe a particular data format for "accurate communication of health data". It just tries to patent the idea of communicating accurately certain subject matters. In other words, it patents the problem, not the solution. Therefore it patents all solutions, even those not yet invented.
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
Perhaps the problem is not with employers meddling with your personal business, but with insurance companies.
Think about it. The helthier you are, the less your employer has to pay for your medical insurance. It is only natural that they want to penalize your whopper scarfing.
To me, the idea that people are thinking of this kind of thing is what this story is about.
Why call it creepy?
If video games - like Wii Fit - demand or encourage strenuous physical activity, shouldn't they be calibrated for the player's age, physical and mental condition?
The doctor, coach or trainer in the real world needs to be alert to signs of stress. He needs to be aware of the environment - temperature and humidity, for example.
Otherwise one of his best players may collapse and die on the field:
dies of heat stroke
Just to keep me honest health-wise. If left to my own devices I tend to do unhealthy things. :\
So figure out how to do this yourself and sell M$ the patent. Hint: Google Android tablets are down to $105 + shipping if you can make a Chinese connection. And most contain accelerometers. Look for one with a USB port so you can hook up other sensors.
Tech Public Policy stuff
To me, the idea that people are thinking of this kind of thing is what this story is about. Not that they might get a patent for it.
Reminds me of:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/06/securitymatters_0626
Every harsh word you utter has the right address. It only sounds harsh because the one on the envelope is the wrong one.
Think about it. The helthier you are, the less your employer has to pay for your medical insurance. It is only natural that they want to penalize your whopper scarfing.
And make you feel miserable for it. A better way would be to have government invest our tax money into health care so neither the company nor its employees have to act under pressure. But of course, some governments obviously prefer to get weapons instead.
Every harsh word you utter has the right address. It only sounds harsh because the one on the envelope is the wrong one.
If that affects in any way their job the company has everyright to penalize them.
His health readings will indicate that he's a fertile God that swims the English channel daily. The hacks for this will be plentiful. Think of what happened in GATTACA to fake an ID.