Health is only what’s easy to measure: the case for mental health tracking

Depression; via pixabay.com

When Apple launched its Healthkit you could see from their language they wanted to impress upon the rest of us just what an achievement it was: "...It just might be the beginning of a health revolution". While there is no doubt in our mind that health apps are way more valuable than most people realize (even if they cover really basic measures, such as the number of steps per day, etc), their language reflect some doubts as well.

One of the reasons to harbor doubts about it was pointed by Brian Whitman on Twitter (see screen capture below). Indeed, why don’t we have anything like a mental health tracking app? The answer, at least superficially, seems to be that it is difficult to measure with some degree of accuracy and displayed neatly on your smartphone.

Brian Whitman about lack of mental health
  tracking on iOS HealthKit. Screencapture

This is context for our recommendation of a recent post by Christina Farr in FastCompany.com.
Why do we recommend it? Beyond the obvious fact that we need mental health monitoring (a lot of our physical health depends on it), there are two important, albeit conflicting aspects she points out:

  • »   It isn’t at all easy to develop an algorithm to measure global mental health.
  • »   Some basic measures can be - and should be - implemented in distant health monitoring: self-reported data (like mood), sleep, stress and anxiety via tracking heart rate, respiration, or perspiration levels, level of social interaction during a given time period, etc.

Our own comment on this issue can be deduced from the title: are we willing to accept that "Health" should be defined only by those things which are easy to measure? At CashDoctor we never let the sheer scale of the problem discourage us. For years now, CashDoctor® is project that moves "against the grain". We took as our mission to return health care to the PEOPLE and reduce the cost making it affordable for all. By sharing information information about healthcare prices with virtually everyone via the CashDoctor® website and social media tools, we can put the healthcare industry on its HEAD and you just might save someone’s life in doing so.

Join now to bring transparency and change!

Feedback/Comments

Add a comment

Posting comment as guest.
If you already have an account, please LOGIN.
If not, you may consider creating on. It’s FREE!




Popular new stories

9/14/15
AI-enabled healthcare to be free or near free

10/19/15
The snowball that will start and avalanche in healthcare

11/12/15
Moving beyond the PPO

Categories

Editors List

Cash Doctor (Administrator)

Cooper B (Cooper)

George B (George)

Grace B (Grace)

Rob Stehlin (rob_stehlin)

Tags

8 word solution to healthcare access to health care access to information affordable health care afghanistan war ai-enabled healthcare annual cost of medical errors in usa apple healthkit bad healthcare barack obama big data cash doctor app cashdoctor app cashdoctor community cashdoctor mission cashdoctor.com platform cash-only patients college students are hurting consumer empowerment cost increases cost of health care cost reduction cost transparency crowdsourcing healthcare information data mining destroyed lives direct pay physicians direct pay practice direct pay system disruptive technologies dr. oliva blog post florida hospital association future healthcare google knowledge graph health health apps health care health care debate health care deception health care hidden agendas health care reform health insurance health insurance is a right health law health measures health plan healthcare healthcare changes healthcare decision making healthcare factors healthcare impact healthcare insurance healthcare lies healthcare movement healthcare price transparency healthcare reform healthcare solution healthcare system healthcare transparency health-related queries higher deductibles hospital cash discount hurt women hurt young people insurance insurance scam internet self-diagnosis large price increases lost jobs measuring value medical data privacy medical debt medical records privacy medical services price sharing medicare payments mobile apps mobile health search mobile healthcare mobile medicine obama obama administration obama’s health care lies obama’s manipulation obamacare obamacare and babies obamacare and pregnant women obamacare deception obamacare disinformation obamacare lies opposed to obamacare patient empowerment physician extenders ppo prefered provider organizations pregnant women and healthcare president obama prevention price comparison data price transparency privacy breach public agenda national survey public expectations on price information searching for healthcare costs share cost sharing information about medical costs social media impact on healthcare standardization of medical procedures symptom search telemedicine transparency transparent free market solution u.s. health system unmet needs us healthcare 2015 predictions usa today analysis user-friendly healthcare it value-based healthcare value-based points what women think of obamacare white house lies women women hate obamacare world hospital database