Health insurance companies want to use data from fitness bracelets

Fitness tracker for everyone: health insurance companies want to use data

While fitness bracelets and special apps help monitor important data such as heart rate and metabolism, many of the devices perform poorly in tests, they measure a lot of crap. Nevertheless, health insurance companies want to use the data of fitness bracelets more in the future.
Trend towards digital self-monitoring
For years, a curious trend of digital self-monitoring has been observed in this country. The demand for health and fitness apps as well as technical gadgets like wristbands is constantly increasing. Although experts warn caution in health apps to exercise because they too often lead to falsified results. But that does not stop German health insurance companies from putting more emphasis on such data. As the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" (SZ) reports, representatives of politics and health insurances want to make the health data of insured persons more usable than before.

Save fitness data in electronic health record
Thus, many would support the recent push by the Techniker-Krankenkasse (TK) to save data from fitness wristbands in the electronic health record. The possibilities of digitization would have to be "finally used in health care," said the patient representative of the Federal Government, Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU), to the SZ. Germany is in this context "still developing country". In his opinion, the electronic patient record offers "great opportunities". This also applies to the use of data from fitness trackers, which are usually worn on the wrist and store, among other motion and sleep profiles. However, Laumann warned that no person should be urged to hand over data.

Application only applicable in a few years
TK boss Jens Baas had suggested that movement data should be included in the planned electronic patient record. The patient, however, must remain "master of his file". The patient file is an application based on the electronic health card, which can be used to store X-rays and laboratory findings in a few years, for example, and can be accessed via the insurance card by doctors. According to the SZ other health insurance companies were open to the proposal of the TK, but also expressed doubts.

Beware of sharing health information
As Barmer boss Christoph Straub explained, he closely observes the development of fitness bracelets. He said, "Considerations to capture these data online and make it accessible to health care are, however, at the present time a vision of the future." Straub assumes that the legislator "put a stop to such plans". Already in the past, caution was expressed in the transmission of health data on the modern aids. The Federal Data Protection Commissioner also criticized the fitness apps that some private insurers have been offering for some time.

Third parties could skim or manipulate data
As the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" writes, government circles said that the technical connection of the manufacturers to the planned high-security network of the health card could be a hurdle in the implementation of the project. For example, a recent study by British and Canadian researchers has shown that many fitness bracelets allow others to skim off or manipulate health data. The doctors also criticize the TC plans.

"Data Cemetery" for physicians
According to Franz Bartmann, board member of the German Medical Association, tracking data in patient files is "garbage". Most users are young people who are willing to work and are not normally doctors. In addition, meaningful data collected by the patient and incorporated into the treatment must meet the strict criteria of the Medical Devices Act. The digital association Bitkom considers the interpretation of this data only useful if doctors can easily use it. The Bitkom expert Pablo Mentzinis said that without a uniform solution from all manufacturers, the sensors for doctors rather produced a "data cemetery". (Ad)