How reliable is the health age calculation of smart watches?
Wearable technologies promise that users can predict their future health conditions by offering health age calculations. But the experience of Victoria Song from The Verge’s Optimizer corner shows how misleading these metrics can be. A user aged 0.9 times in Whoop tracking device was shown four to five years old than the actual age.
Health age measurements offered by wearable devices are problematic:
- Whoop example: The device calculates the user with a more advanced health age than the actual age, which makes concern to the place of motivation
- Independent algorithms: Different devices remove completely different results from the same data
- Inquires scientific basis: The concept of health age is not fully standardized yet and can not only calculate special variables
- Apple Watch’s new step: After the new Apple Watch announcement, similar discussions started
Marketers are successful to offer healthcare technology as a solution that changes to life**. But these devices are forced to make informed decisions without having realistic health data. To understand your true health condition, the doctor is more reliable to consult.
Wearable technology can support to live healthy, but it should seek scientific evidence before making serious decisions in the light of numbers that devices offer.