Privacy and Healthcare

Some fifty to sixty years ago and I recall, a person went to a physician with an ailment. The concept of annual physicals we still new and their value was questionable. The country had a waning public health system, where public clinics administered vaccines, did a modicum of early childhood health monitoring, and hospitals for the chronically and terminally ill. Communicable disease were dealt with in a draconian style, one was interned in a hospital to handle that illness such as TB.

Today we seem to want to collect massive amounts of individual data down to a person's DNA whether we can handle it or not. Whether it is efficacious or not.

A cable TV company now wants to monitor your every physical activity. Beckers notes:

Comcast's in-home device will monitor people's basic health metrics through ambient sensors. It will focus on if a person is making routine trips to the bathroom or spending too much time in bed. Additionally, Comcast is developing a tool to detect when a person falls.Comcast plans to offer the device to at-risk people, including seniors and people with disabilities, however, the pricing and exact launch schedule is still unknown,

 Imagine monitoring urine flow! This is a significant privacy issue. Who would have access to the data and for what purpose. At what point do we stop monitoring everything since we have no idea what the data is worth.