> Now we're doing everything we can to move computation to the edge. In an ideal world, the cloud wouldn't store or process anything - just receive already-analyzed, privacy-preserving results straight from the device.
I appreciate moving away from cloud for personal health data like this.
Can you clarify why the ideal world you hint at would have the device sending any data to you?
Devices sending data that is anonymized, encrypted, and signed by the device is a must-have for some medical studies.
For example, imagine a medical study that looks at heart rate variability versus an intervention. The data analysts won't need to know each patient's name or email address, but will need to know each patient's heart rate variability when you're having the intervention. The study may span many physical locations, such as at multiple medical providers across a country.
Interesting point about anonymized data! I've been thinking about how sensitive health information can actually make or break a study. The idea of sending only encrypted, signed data sounds perfect for that. I mean, I wonder how many studies are limited just because researchers can’t get the data they need without compromising privacy.
I've seen this with other health apps too – the balance between usability and security is tough! It reminds me of the push for end-to-end encryption in messaging apps. Like, we have the tech to keep things private, but how do we still provide value to researchers who really need access to those anonymized datasets for insights?
I'd be curious if there’s been any pushback from the medical community on this approach. I can imagine some would argue that the more security layers there are, the harder it may be to analyze trends effectively. But maybe that's just the growing pains of tech in healthcare?
Ditto on this! I've avoided fitness trackers so far because I don't want any cloud aka my data on someone else's computer
for regular users, since the device itself doesn't have any interface, we need to send at least some data so they can see it somewhere. the natural place is the phone, but not all of our professional clients liked viewing long ECG recordings or detailed metrics on a small screen, so we built cloud access mostly for convenience .
(to be clear - if a developer wants, they don't need to send anything to us)