After COVID - how tech can help us

There’s been a lot of talk about tracking the coronavirus with technology, and predicting if people will get sick using fitness trackers. In this interview with Fox 10, Katina Michael, ASU futurist professor talks about what a future after coronavirus would look like with tech. For example, the potential for “touchless” technology – self opening doors etc. 

Background

• Fitbit device sales registered an impressive growth from 2010 to 2014, rising from almost 60 thousand units sold to over 10 million. The company has six trackers with fitness and health related functions, such as counting steps, calories, distance, active minutes, monitoring heart rate and sleep tracking

• 100 million devices

• Fitbit reports to have sold more than 100 million devices and have 28 million users. In 2019, Google announced its intention to buy Fitbit for $2.1 billion.

• Controversies: In December 2019, a New York University cardiologist named Dr. Joseph Wiesel sued Apple over allegations that the Apple Watch violates a patented method for detecting atrial fibrillation. Wiesel claimed he had shared details of the patent with Apple in September 2017, but the company refused to negotiate.

• The main competitors to the Apple Watch are Samsung Galaxy Watch and Fitbit Versa 2. Functionality-wise, the Samsung Galaxy Watch and Apple Watch are very similar.

Facts

• 100 million Fitbits sold to about 28 million users

• Apple Watch is major competitor but numbers of sales not sold

• Additional market share with Galaxy Android Watch

• Google bought Fitbit for 2.1 billion dollars

• 250K points of data recorded daily on the Fitbit

• Stanford researchers and others weighing up usefulness of an approach to overcoming COVID using Fitbit devices in different ways; sharing data in a crowdsource fashion or using it to identify someone’s physical characteristics may be varying towards being symptomatic: heart rate, pulse rate, blood oxygen levels, skin temperature and much more.

Main sources taken from:

• collaborative work completed with Dr MG Michael on uberveillance, and Dr Roba Abbas on COVID-19 apps

• https://investor.fitbit.com/press/press-releases/press-release-details/2020/Fitbit-Collaborates-with-Scripps-Research-and-Stanford-Medicine-to-Study-the-Role-of-Wearables-to-Detect-Track-and-Contain-Infectious-Diseases-like-COVID-19/default.aspx

• https://www.fitbit.com/us/products/whats-new

• https://www.wired.com/story/wearable-covid-19-symptoms-research/

• https://www.techradar.com/au/news/your-fitbit-can-now-help-protect-you-from-covid-19

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiejennings/2020/04/17/fitbit-and-other-wearables-could-help-researchers-predict-coronavirus-before-symptoms-start/#69c65d5c4efa

• https://lifehacker.com/assist-covid-19-research-by-sharing-your-fitbit-data-1842987405?IR=T

Katina Michael, Syleste Rodriguez (Arizona Morning Anchor), Melanie Dudley (Exec Producer), 21 April 2020, “Fitness trackers, emerging tech and COVID”, FOX10 News: Breakfast (Tech This Out), https://www.fox10phoenix.com/person/r/syleste-rodriguez