Alfred Poor Talks About Health Wearables at CES (Video)

The biggest shift in wearables that Alfred Poor saw at CES was from consumer wearables to wearables designed to serve corporate goals, especially cutting health care costs. He says that when it comes to fitness and other health-related wearables, "consumer is the past and business is the future."

Comments

Agreed

[110010001000]

In order for my company to save money on healthcare costs they now require me to wear a health band with 24x7 monitoring. The data is sent to their cloud for archival purposes and analysis. My manager gets emailed a weekly report on the status of my health and a risk quotient factor. This is used during my review to make sure they I am hitting my target. According to the CFO this has shaved 23% off of our annual healthcare costs. All hail the Company!

Re:Agreed

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Ditto, except as developers we almost immediately hacked our shitty provider's interface ("Virgin Pulse"?) and just injected whatever values made us look just above average into the system. The stupid hardware is probably still in our desks, but with luck we'll never need it.

Re:Agreed

[110010001000]

I would try that too, but our system is based on Oracle in the Cloud and as we all know Oracle is Unbreakable. All hail Oracle!

Re: Agreed

[ArmoredDragon]

It's probably also more likely to improve your overall health, which is hard to argue is a bad thing.

My company is self insured (we go through a major provider but we only use them to take advantage of their contract rates with doctors in their network) and while they don't require anything like fitness bands, they do offer free programs (I.e fitness classes, diet programs) and offer an incentive (lower premium cost) if you either meet certain health standards OR show year over year improvement in those metrics.

And before somebody snarks about employer provided coverage, I'm in need of a kidney transplant, which they cover 100% (not even so much as a copay) and I'm just a rank and file employee.

Re:Agreed

[Frosty Piss]

I have to wonder if you can be forced to wear one of those as a condition of employment?

Re:Agreed

[110010001000]

It is in my contract when I signed it. They attached it to me the first day and I haven't taken it off since (1,564 days and counting!). Praise the Company!

Re: Agreed

[110010001000]

It is a Good thing because it is for the Good of the Company! All Praise to the Company!

Re:Agreed

[Roblimo]

That's a question the lawyers are starting to wrestle with. What if you're handicapped in some way? How does the ADA apply?

Re:Agreed

[110010001000]

I don't know how it works anywhere else, but at my Company the lawyers send you to the recycling center if you become disabled. This ensures a fresh supply of Soylent green for the rest of the workers. The ADA only covers workers that are currently living.

Re:Agreed

[drooling-dog]

No acquired handicaps, because the company will provide sterile padded rooms and self-driving cars, and monitor forbidden risky behaviors. No handicaps from birth, because the company breeding program is optimized to ensure no imperfect children.

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

"Excuse me? I have to wear what? You can shove that bracelet up your ass mister. Fuck you and goodbye!"

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail the Company!

Hooray! Feudalism 2.0!

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot "all hail the Company!"

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you joking or is this for real? I'm asking this seriously: it sounds so dystopian to me meanwhile I know that this is technically possible that I really can't tell the difference.

Re: Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

Telling the difference between jokes and corporate policies is always difficult. Get used to it.

As to this...just another solution in search of a problem. It does unfortunately have the potential to cause trouble for employees, just like these stupid 'wellness programs' that have been proven to not work or have any measurable benefit at all, and yet far too many employers have them.

For employees, the time to say no to this crap was when those programs started. Now you're gonna have Silicon Valley twerps trying to cash in on it and it's going to be a longer fight against those employers dumb enough to adopt it.

If workers hadn't bought into the well funded anti union propaganda the last few decades I would point out that this crap is exactly the kind of thing collective bargaining prevents. So all you special snowflakes who are so great at dictating the terms of your employment to a huge corporation just go lead the charge against this, ok?

Seriously though, no employer is strapping one of those on me for any reason ever. I urge everyone else to adopt that policy too.

Re: Agreed

[ArmoredDragon]

Well I don't know about you, but I really like where I'm working at. We don't seem to hire any douchebags so I don't ever see any infighting, and everybody from the building maintenance people to the CEO seems to be treated equally.

Re:Agreed

[SemperUbi]

How on earth is this not a massive violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule?

Re:Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a hard time believing you even managed to type that with a straight face...

wear our watch

[turkeydance]

for the best rates

The future...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://i.imgur.com/zzcD0xL.jpg

Your health insurance requires it.

He looks like the video professor

[The-Ixian]

Please..... buy my product...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Dislexia acting up again.

[codeButcher]

I read the 3d word in the summary as a 4-letter word that did not include the letter f. By the end of the summary it seems I was not that far off...