Raleigh, NC (Ivanhoe Newswire) – iWatch, Fitbit, Garmin, and Oura are all wearable gadgets, or smart watches, that have revolutionized the way we track our health and wellness. About 1 in 5 people own one, according to Harvard Health. But how accurate are they? A new study sheds light on the pros and cons of smart devices.
From steps and calories to heart rate and sleep duration, smartwatches track it all.
The benefit of these devices is that studies have shown that people who track their health with smart devices increase their physical activity by 50 minutes per week and take 1,200 more steps per day.
Health alerts can detect potential health issues such as irregular heartbeat, but are these smartwatches always right?
“These are a good starting point, but they won’t work equally well for everyone,” says Vanessa Volpe, PhD, a health psychologist at North Carolina State University.
Vanessa Volpe, a psychologist at North Carolina State University, and her team tested the smartwatch.
“If you flip the device over, you might see a beam of light, often a green light, coming out of the back of the device,” Volpe says.
That green light is sent through the skin and reflected back to the watch’s sensors, but Volpe says that green light is reflected differently depending on skin color: “If you have more melanin in your skin, meaning darker skin, the light doesn’t penetrate and isn’t reflected to the same extent. For people of color, the reflected signal can be as low as half, which can affect measurements of heart rate, blood pressure and arrhythmias,” Volpe says.
“The technology itself, the way it was designed, didn’t take into account people of different skin tones, particularly darker skin tones,” Volpe explains.
Volpe sees this discrepancy as a sign of the medical field’s failure to understand how race impacts health, and he hopes his findings can help address racial disparities in health care.
Another downside to disclosing your health information is that it can be tracked by unknown third parties. Fitness app data isn’t protected by HIPAA like health information, so it can be sold or shared with data brokers who use it to personalize ads. Fitness trackers typically connect to your phone via Bluetooth, which means your personal data can be hacked. To protect yourself, change your fitness default settings to prevent your information from being shared.
Contributors to this news report include producer Marcia Lewis, editor Roque Correa and videographer Matt Goldschmidt.
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