I have some questions about fitness trackers (Garmin, Apple Watch, Fitbit, etc) with respect to how they track and log data, what happens if multiple devices are worn, and "defeating" them with respect to showing activities that were not actually performed. I will explain why....
BACKGROUND
I signed up for life insurance a while back and as part of the program, they promote subscribers to log health activities to reduce the insurance premium and get various "bonus" incentives (Amazon gift cards, etc). No doubt, regular exercise and improved diet/fitness reduces your chances of dying so they calculated it was worth launching this incentive. Whatever money they spent on the program, they make back 10x over by fewer deaths and less insurance payout.
In order to promote exercise they offered everyone a minimal of a free Garmin vivofit device, and for extra money some more "premium" trackers if you chose. NOT that a few bucks a month was going to be the reason for me exercising, but if I am doing it anyways, why not take advantage of rewards associated with it and track myself doing it? This was my first fitness tracker, otherwise I don't really rely on those metrics.
FAST FORWARD a few years, I still use the free vivofit I got when I signed up with the plan. However, I kind of want to try an Apple watch. The way it works is they give you the Apple Watch practically for free and then charge you monthly for the cost until pay out the watch over 1-2 years. To reduce or eliminate this monthly fee, you can "pay" with fitness points! If you earn a certain number per month, the monthly fee is $0.... If you keep this up for the duration of the 1-2 years you essentially obtained the watch for free.
It's not all or nothing... at the very worst, if you did NO EXERCISE at all you would simply pay what the watch is worth market price. If you exercise enough to fund your watch per month, you get the watch for free. If you keep up about with about 50% of the exercising regimen then you pay about half as much for the watch as it normally costs.
ISSUES
I've noticed with the vivofit that it simply tracks movement (this one has no HR monitor). So if you are playing the piano it will register as a huge number of steps, but if you are on a bicycle it thinks you are doing NOTHING as your arms barely move. It is easy to defeat the vivofit because if you wanted to earn your points and cheat, you could simply make a small device on a motor that shook it for 60 minutes a day and rack up steps.
I am assuming the Apple watch needs to detect at least a pulse (or temperature?) and that it won't just rack up steps by jiggling it in the air, or attached to some device that shakes it. Does anyone know whether the device must be worn on the wrist, or whether it can be wrapped around an ankle or placed on the outside of a shoe and still work? Note that the vivofit didn't care, as long as it was shaken.
Since I ride my bike to work during better weather months, I was forced to put the vivofit on my ankle or stuck to my shoelaces as it would not count my steps otherwise. I believe the Apple watch should be better at monitoring the bike ride as it sees heart rate, even though my wrist doesn't move at all. If it has GPS then I guess it would also log distance, and using some calculation factor in certain amount of exercise.
MULTIPLE DEVICES
What happens if you wear *BOTH* devices at once? Say a Garmin and Apple watch. Both will be tracking steps, both logging data. Now on an iPhone at least, the Garmin app is set to integrate data in to the Apple Health app. The Apple watch would do so as well.... so does data from both devices get integrated into the app, and what happens to it? If they are tracking the same activity, I assume there are date/time stamps on it and the health app knows to integrate data from both devices into the same thing? Or does it neglect one and choose the other?
For example, if I am biking and one device shows no steps (vivofit if worn on wrist), the Apple watch shows HR elevated and GPS data... what happens? What if I wore the vivofit on the foot, it shows tons of steps, but the Apple watch shows few steps but only HR and GPS data? What if playing the piano, vivofit shows lots of steps, and Apple watch likely won't register much exercise at all (I don't know how it reacts to hand piano movement given the HR would likely be normal).
I'm wondering if I wear both devices what actually ends up happening in the Apple Health App, or if anyone has tried this. Do they get registered separately and logged and kept separately or is there some convergence of the data, and if so, which one takes priority? Ultimately the insurance company needs data and the question becomes whether you end up selecting ONE device as the primary data source or whether you can wear both and it just gets integrated into Health Kit. I believe the insurance app pulls data from Health app so it would really depend on how it ends up getting processed in there.
SUMMARY
I think it's interesting that insurance companies are doing this, but I can see that incentivizing it this way can promote cheating. In the long run, people would only be cheating themselves. I'm curious though as to how multiple device management would be tackled, if anyone knows, and what happens on devices with HR monitors (vs. a simple step-counter) when they are not worn in a way that would give a temperature/pulse (which would be harder to defeat).
Well I'm about to find out as in a few weeks I'm hoping to receive the Apple Watch and wondering whether I should still wear the vivofit too.
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