Opinion: Apple, Fitbit Should Use all that Data They Collect from You to Protect Public Health

By incorporating social and community factors, digital health products could better capture what goes into public health. Communitywide data from fitness trackers and other digital data already feed into some public health models. Fitbit publishes reports that show, for example, communities where people exercise the most. Cellphone location data is sometimes used to map disease outbreaks. These models and their underlying datasets could prove to be a boon to those people and agencies responsible for protecting and improving all of our health. Aggregated health data that reflects communitywide factors has for centuries now aided public health practitioners, allowing them to make seemingly simple improvements that nonetheless greatly impact people’s lives. Read this op-ed from USA Today here.