Well, that went well: Withings founder buys biz back from Nokia Nokia has dispensed with fitness gear maker Withings, less than two years after acquiring it as part of a bold new strategic move into digital health. Withings will be sold to Éric Carreel, who co-founded Withings in 2008 with Cédric Hutchings, who is currently VP of Digital Health at Nokia. The company heavily promotes its …
There's a lot to like about the Withings stuff: it's certainly well-designed and looks good. And there's the cloud. If there is stuff that I do not want putting on computers I can't trust then it's health-related data. So, while the Withings set of scales looked better, I went with the Soehnle which stores the data locally or on your phone. The app isn't brilliant but it's good enough™ and they have made improvements.
In the days of Symbian Belle Nokia had a health tracking app which could be configured to store data locally. All they had to do was the same again and connect it to watches, scales, or whatever and they'd've been 100% GDPR friendly while almost nobody else is.
While I understand the desire to not hold many types of health data in the cloud, I believe there is some room for permitting some data like weight, when weighed, steps taken etc. I guess data you don’t mind if leaked is ok.
Remind me again in the future when some terrible use case for this data comes to light and I’ll be full of humble pie, but for now the advantages of cloud storage for this stuff I find useful. For example I can step on the scales every morning for months and then look back at the trends in various apps that sync up when I remember to open the app when I have the time to look at these things. Tracking my fitness activities or lack of and comparing weights currently shows me I loose weight when I’m not exercising a lot. This is due to the amount of water I consume when I exercise (mainly cycling).
When my Dr’s say I should loose weight I can show them all my activities and my weights and prove to them I do exercise much more than they assume I do. I can also game them by piling on the weight by drinking loads of water and then easily shed it by sitting on my arse for 2 weeks to make them happy. I can even link Dr’s health apps to mine over the cloud so they can see for themselves I’m active as they won’t believe it otherwise.
The terrible use case is the data being used to increase the difficulty faced by people obtaining healthcare and making those who are more likely to need some extra care being less likely to get it.
Data about your health is about as personal as information gets. Why hand it over in real-time to a commercial entity for no personal benefit?
I’d consider it positive data to the negative data they have from your spending habits correlated with your phone signals to show where you’ve been and what you’ve done. Those phone records showing you stop at that kebab shop twice a week, or McDonald’s or what you buy at the news agents etc.
Even being off radar is no defence now days.
Mostly they're not being nokia, the handset maker that owned the world. Their cell infra side was always a strong sideline but when they lost the plot on handsets at least they got something out of MS (seeing as it was MS-flavoured koolaid that sealed that fate). Nokia died, but what remains is doing alright, considering.
I’m vaguely aware of Withings, because I occasionally follow Nokia-related news to see whether the patient still has a heartbeat, as it were, but I have never seen billboard advertising for Withings nor seen their products in the shops.
Bonus (or perhaps malus) points for having a stupid name: is it with-ings or we-things or…?
All these purveyors of 'ealth apps are limiting access to each other's data. It seems that the only way to get any worthwhile benefit is to stick with one eco system. Unfortunately no one company handles a wide enough range of IOTs to give a complete picture.
So I end up with Withings (weight/blood pressure), Polar for rowing, Garmin for cycling, Sleeptracker for steps(walking), and Beddit for sleeping. Do these communicate in a IOS environment? Of course not!
I've ended up giving away my Qardio because of the locked in system it operates in.
The best app so far has been the Nokia, sorry Withings, app but only in its limited sphere.
Of course most of these have manual input capabilities but I do not wish to go back to the days of floppies.
"So I end up with Withings (weight/blood pressure), Polar for rowing, Garmin for cycling, Sleeptracker for steps(walking), and Beddit for sleeping."
Do you actually need all these things?
I suppose they're good for weight loss. One's wallet would be much lighter after buying them all.
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