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.
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