Who could possibly object to Wes Streeting’s plan to turn the NHS ‘from hospital to neighbourhood’ and from ‘sickness to prevention’? Of course, it is much better to prevent an illness than to wait until you develop it and then have it treated. But I feel a sense of alarm at the Health Secretary’s plans to distribute smartwatch-style devices to monitor our health in real time. Patients will be given them to monitor blood pressure, glucose levels and other metrics, supposedly in order to keep them out of hospital.
But it shouldn’t be hard to see where this will all too easily lead. At first, the smartwatches will be just for people with diagnosed conditions like heart disease and diabetes. But gradually it will seep into the rest of the population, to the point that we will all be expected to wear them. As with Covid testing and vaccines, there will be a price if we refuse. The life insurance industry will get in on the act, just as it has with black boxes on cars – which offer us the chance of lower premiums if we agree to have our driving habits constantly monitored. You won’t wear a Fitbit? Sorry, that will be an extra £200 a year – or you might not be able to get cover at all.
I am all for governments giving us information on healthy eating, exercise routines and so on, but that is where it should stop – leaving us to make the decision about what we want to eat, and whether we smoke or drink. Taking the concept of preventative medicine further, as Streeting seems to want to do, will inevitably turn into an excuse for the state to exert more control over our lives.
Take these plans to their logical conclusion and we will have devices that start bleeping when we exceed the maximum heart rate that our NHS health plan has designated for us. They will start squealing when they detect alcohol in our blood, flashing and telling us they have detected we have consumed an illicit doughnut. No one should call this far-fetched. It is exactly what will happen, by degrees. Like the proverbial frog who stays in a pot as the temperature is raised to boiling point, no one step will be quite big enough to draw protest, yet we will end up with something that would appall us if introduced in one go.
Streeting’s conceit that a big drive towards preventative medicine will save the NHS money is fanciful. As the Royal College of Surgeons warned in 2018, when wearable devices were in their infancy, tempting people constantly to monitor their fitness and health threatens to ‘send the worried well into hyperdrive’. It quoted the ‘Angelina Jolie effect’, where GPs and specialists were inundated with patients after the actress was reported to have had herself tested for a gene linked to higher risk of cancer. Those with a tendency towards hypochondria will be driven to even greater levels of anxiety as they are drawn to checking their health metrics constantly – which will itself have a detrimental effect on their health.
Sorry, Wes, but I won’t be wearing one of your devices. I am very keen on looking after my health, but I am not going to consent to being monitored like a piece of industrial plant. To me, a doctor will always be someone to consult when you develop symptoms, not because some wretched device dangling around my wrist has decided there is cause for concern.
Listen to Coffee House Shots:
Comments