Health-monitoring devices are the latest fixation of the elite

The devices that monitor blood sugar levels have been used for years by people suffering from diabetes, like Nick Joneas who is the sponsor of an American brand that produces them, but recently, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, monitoring blood sugar levels seems to have become the latest trend among the elites – along with an interest in healthy food and technologies capable of tracking health status. Today, 46% of adults in the United Kingdom claim to use health monitoring devices. An example of these tools is the Health app on the iPhone, which, among other things, monitors heart rate when connected to a smartwatch. Dr. Rachael Kent, a lecturer at King's College London and host of the podcast Digital Health Diagnosed, told Dazed that "health monitoring apps and wearables have been steadily increasing since 2010, and today more and more people are keeping track of various aspects of their health." The trend has taken off since, in recent years, numerous brands offering targeted fitness and nutrition programs have emerged, such as Lingo, Signos, Veri, and The Better Nutrition Program, which also provide their customers with specific devices to monitor health status.

Is Being Overly Health Conscious Worse?

The most popular among these programs is ZOE, which focuses on nutrition – it has over 130,000 subscribers and on Instagram, it has a community of over half a million users. Specifically, ZOE "evaluates" foods based on how they affect blood sugar levels: users, by wearing the appropriate blood glucose monitoring device, can see in real time the impact of their nutritional choices – for example, "you might find that some of your favorite healthy snacks and meals are actually having a negative effect on your body," as stated on the brand's website. But is all this awareness of one's health really necessary?

Nicola Guess, a dietitian and researcher at the University of Oxford, told Dazed that although it's not problematic for non-diabetic individuals to use such devices, there probably isn't a real need to do so, nor concrete evidence that this approach actually improves individual health. A person who tested ZOE told the British magazine that while the experience itself was interesting and quite positive, they believe it's counterproductive, or at least controversial, for people to have access to so much data about their bodies – which would make them more obsessed than anything. According to Dr. Kent, compulsive self-monitoring of health can lead to a kind of dependence, which in turn can cause excessive and unnecessary stress, as well as anxiety, especially for those who don't suffer from any pathology.

Will We Heal Ourselves with Artificial Intelligence?

The development of health monitoring technologies is linked to the significant increase in data in the field of medicine. In this sense, in the future, it's not unlikely that artificial intelligence itself will contribute to curing people or preventing diseases. Already in these years, all over the world, doctors and researchers are collaborating to harness these technological resources; but limits, possible counterproductive effects, and potential errors are also being evaluated. The belief is that artificial intelligence can improve healthcare worldwide, but only if ethics and human rights are placed at the center of its implementation, as stated in the report Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health, published by the World Health Organization (WHO). In this study, researchers have identified several principles to ensure that artificial intelligence for patient care operates in the public interest and respects privacy. The most important is the protection of human autonomy: doctors, essentially, must still maintain control over healthcare systems and ultimate decisions regarding patients.