Your employer sends out an email saying they want to make sure you’re getting enough sleep and physical activity, are eating well and feeling creative and, finally, have a sense of “mindfulness.” So they’re providing a free app designed to facilitate finding your “anchoring purpose in life.”
Sound like a nice perk? Now add in one more detail.
All the information, albeit with individual data de-identified, goes into a giant database meant to boost productivity and reduce medical costs by improving worker physical and mental health.
Any less excited?
The app, from a start-up called JOOL Health, raises the question of when good engagement can bleed into overtones of Big Brother. The answer is complicated.
JOOL is the brainchild of Victor Strecher, a professor of health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and a successful entrepreneur. Marketed to third parties rather than direct-to-consumer, the app was pitched at a recent consumer experience conference sponsored by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) as a way to go “from wellness to engaged wellbeing in the Digital Age.”
Many recent press reports have centered around the notion that Republicans are stuck in the mud trying to get their repeal and replace promises moving.
It is well recognized that over the past several decades US prisons and jails have become the nation’s largest inpatient psychiatric hospitals.
Her voice cracked with strain. I could imagine the woman at the other end of the line shaking, overcome with remorse about the hospital where her husband had had esophageal surgery. Might he still be alive, she asked me, if they had chosen a different hospital?
