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.'"

Comments

what about Bob?

[gearloos]

Well now this will give Microsoft Bob something to play when he's not on his Kin.

The scary part

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The scary part

[Anonymous Coward]

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 what makes you think private insurers wouldn't leap at the chance to require the same kind of monitoring and tracking? Insurance companies love segregating people into different risk pools so that they can charge high risk customers more money. The profit motive is very powerful, and insurance companies, like all corporations, are amoral entities. In fact, it would require government regulation to ensure that insurance companies didn't require this sort of thing. So why not expect that there could be government regulation forbidding the government to require it?

Alternatively, what's so bad about asking people who voluntarily undertake unhealthy habits to pay more for their risk taking? You already pay more for health insurance if you smoke, for example. Why should others subsidize voluntary risk takers? And why shouldn't we give people economic incentives to be healthy?

Re:The scary part

[Black Gold Alchemist]

The republicans and democrats are both the same. The republicans say they want to take your freedom to protect "the children" and religious morality. The democrats say they want to take your freedom to protect your health and the environment. In the end, however, the goal is simply to increase the power of the government and its owners. The children, the morals, the environment, and now health are just lies they tell to promote this. The goals of the government are two fold. The first is to track your every move. The second is to make sure you have no time outside of work and government mandated activity. The government mandated exercise will slowly take up more and more of your time until you have no free time. To "protect the environment" your car will be tracked, and cars will eventually banned to force everyone to take public transit, so they can be tracked - in the name of the environment. Then you will only be allowed to eat approved food, in the name of your health. Your electricity will be monitored in the name of the environment (another reason to oppose the smart grid). The goal of these regulations is not to do what they say they do but to increase the power of the government. To allow the government to arrest, fine, and detain anyone at any time. Anyone they don't like will be hit with lifestyle violations, energy violations, excessive car use violations, etc. Who do we vote for?

They already do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't people already do the Wearing Health on Your Sleeve?

http://noadventure.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/scooter.jpg

An Odd Reading of the Applications

[Grond]

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.

Re:An Odd Reading of the Applications

[derGoldstein]

There's no particular reason to think that Microsoft or any other company is going to use these inventions to evil ends.

I'm aware that I'm more cynical than most, but I'm still forced to ask: Have you not met humans? The meaning of the words "good" and "evil" is malleable, and depends on countless cultural, habitual, regional, moral, and philosophical variables. They don't have to be "evil" to do something that you won't like, they just have to make sure that they can get away with it, and that it's profitable. They're accountable to shareholders, which means that their ultimate goal is a number. Whatever they can get away with to increase that number, they will do. Rationalization will be dealt with by the PR department.

Re: STILL CREEPY

[lemur3]

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 ou

[Joe The Dragon]

employers SHOULD NOT penalize workers for stuff out side of the job and THIS JUST pushes the health tied to your job BS.

so you have go to there gym? and not your own / ci

[Joe The Dragon]

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.

Privacy, anyone?

[SemperUbi]

This violates the spirit of HIPAA in so many ways. Of course, if people give up their privacy rights by voluntarily disclosing their protected health information to some software app, no one will stop them. And insurance companies will be the first to get their claws on it.

How many people are too stupid to remember that health records are private for a reason?

Re:Privacy, anyone?

[ZeroPly]

I doubt Microsoft is concerned with HIPAA, because this has no chance of being implemented in the short term...

These are just more junk patents from the big corporations; it's unlikely that anyone expects to make any money off this. But IF things change enough and HIPAA is reinterpreted, they're sitting on a gold mine.

There's a simple solution to this. Charge $5,000/yr for every patent that's being held. If your idea isn't worth that much, then you shouldn't be making the government do paperwork for it.

Re:employers SHOULD NOT penalize workers for stuff

[betterunixthanunix]

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?

Re: STILL CREEPY

[derGoldstein]

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).