As consumers increasingly embrace mobile health and fitness devices, some physicians are more than a bit wary of relying on such data for patient care, according to an MIT Technology Review article.
"I'm an oncologist, and I have these patients who are proto 'quantified self' kinds of people," Andrew Trister, an oncologist at Sage Bionetworks, says in the article. "They come in with these very large Excel spreadsheets, with all this information--I have no idea what to do with that."
One big reason is that many devices are not on par with medical industry devices used by caregivers, nor are they validated by federal agencies, such as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. The physicians agree, though, that such devices are proving valuable in one regard--they're getting consumers to be more proactive and attentive to healthcare and lifestyle issues. Article