Wearable Fitness & Health Technology
Welcome to a site that is here to educate you on all things (good and bad) on wearable fitness devices! While some of the words and conclusions are personal testimony, we'll have descriptions and input from Doctors, Disability Consultants, Personal Trainers, and Researchers to consolidate everything you'd want to know. Ever wonder the effect of Fitbit's Leaderboards? (Hydari et al, 2023). Or want to understand how AI and biofeedback affect health devices? (Matt, 2023). This site is your consolidated stop to all your questions.
Health Device History
The wear of personal health devices started in 1965, with the Manpo-Kei device. Invented by Dr. Yoshiro Hatano, it tracked steps - the device name translated to English, means "10,000 steps meter." Since then, we've had the development of many devices, spanning many different populations and cultures. Fast forward to 2024, watches, rings, even phones can track fitness or health data like steps, heart rate, and VO2 measurements (Minsberg, 2024). Do these devices really make you better, faster, and stronger? Most heath effects are beneficial, however, there can be some obsessive habits formed by constant monitoring of health and fitness data.
"Continued usage intention for WFT devices is driven by perceived benefits-health, autonomy, social and hedonic, and individual characteristics-technological innovativeness and perceived health self-efficacy"
Puri et al, 2023
A 2017 study of college students published in the medical journal "Eating Behaviors" found that using a fitness tracker is linked with a higher rate of eating disorder symptoms in some, but didn’t necessarily cause the behaviors.
Wetsman et al, 2024
Wearable health devices (or even carrying around your phone), the data it provides, and asking if it really makes consumers “better, faster, stronger, healthier.”
Minsberg, 2024
References
Hydari, M., Adjerid, I., & Striegel, A. (2023). Health wearables, gamification, and healthful activity. Management Science, 69(7), 3920-3938. https://doi-org.eqproxy.snhu.edu/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4581
Matt. (2024, March 14). Revolutionizing wellness: The Power of Personalized Health Tech. AutoGPT Official. https://autogpt.net/revolutionizing-wellness-the-power-of-personalized-health-tech
Minsberg, T. (2024, February 24). Can fitness trackers really make you fitter?. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/24/well/move/fitness-watch-tracker-wearable-data.html
Puri, S., Pandey, S. and Chawla, D. (2023), "Impact of technology, health and consumer-related factors on continued usage intention of wearable fitness tracking (WFT) devices", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 30 No. 9, pp. 3444-3464
Wetsman, N., Gehlen, B., Katz, E., Benadjaoud, Y., & Pereira, I. (2024, February 8). Fitness Trackers Can Help Monitor Health for Some People, but can Exacerbate Disordered Eating for Others. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/fitness-trackers-monitor-health-people-exacerbate-disordered-eating/story?id=107024066