211–220 of 290 posts
Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…
Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…
I bought one of these during the early-access program, as my old Charge 3 had recently died. I really wanted to like it. Sad to say, it's terrible. Mostly what it did was remind me how much I appreciate stuff that actually works well (e.g., wrist position sensing, so that it turns on when it's supposed to, a reliable touch interface, etc). I ended up buying a Fitbit Sense when they came out a month or so later. I don…
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My ROI argument is approximately that allocating $200 for health watches for everyone AND cutting $2,000 across the board everywhere else in healthcare would lead to the same health outcomes. It's a good point about how the cost of healthcare is unevenly distributed toward the end of life. I really like the newish term "Healthy Life Expectancy".
> ROI argument is approximately that allocating $200 for health watches for everyone AND cutting $2,000 across the board everywhere else in healthcare That sounds a lot like taking $2000 from an elderly cohort (where savings today would mostly come from), and spending $200 on a younger cohort (who would eventually get the $2000 health gains!). Your statement needs far more qualification on who would pay the costs, an…
If everyone gets a $200 smart watch, and 1/10th of those people avoid obesity, we can avoid $20,000 a year in diabetic care and heart surgery and hip replacement for them when they get to be 60.
Completely made up numbers of course, but speaking as one smartwatch wearer, the nudges built into the system play a significant role in keeping me heading to the gym.
It doesn't follow that we'd get the same effect if everyone wore one! But there's something to the case they're making.
Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…
Garmin has been crushing it with their smartwatches. * App store with 3rd party apps and faces. * Always on screen * Physical buttons (Vivoactive is mostly touchscreen oriented, but all their "athlete" watches use buttons) * Week long battery life - Even running GPS tracking for 12 hours straight leaves enough battery for the next day. The biggest downside to the Garmin is trying to figure out which watch to buy. The…
Smartwatches have fallen so far from their peak. In 2015, Pebble had a watch that had: - an app store, third party apps, third party watch faces, and a developer ecosystem - always on screen that didn't require a button press or specific arm gesture, and worked in bright, normally lit conditions - physical buttons instead of tiny buttons on a tiny screen barely larger than the finger pressing it - week long battery l…
Don't forget: 7.5mm thick (for the round version). There is nothing on the market even close. I wore mine until last month when the battery gave out. If I could buy one with a new battery (not a replaced one as it compromises the waterproofing) I'd choose it over any other option available today.
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I had a Pebble Time Steel. Loved the thing to death. The battery was a bit degraded and I got tired of not being able to acknowledge Pagerduty notifications (even though I could receive them), as well as not having any fitness features whatsoever (other than the steps counter). So I bit the bullet and bough an Apple watch. Within two days, I stop using the Pebble. Yes it's nice, but against what's essentially a super…
> Pebble had the right idea. But they executed too slowly and too late. They were also _way_ too small to compete with the industrial design, manufacturing capability, and marketing clout of Apple. Or even Samsung. They were inevitably gonna get crushed. And I say this as a four time Pebble Kickstarter backer who could see it even back then. A couple of kids with an amazing YC pitch deck and ambitions-untempered-by-e…
If you mean sell as many units as Apple and never get bought? Sure.
But as someone who also owned an OG Pebble, if the "Pebble-way" was actually better, it would have won.
Winning might have meant getting acquired, or even just competitors making devices similar in spirit to theirs, but it'd still be a victory.
The "Apple Watch way" was the anti-thesis to the Pebble philosophy with it's needing daily charges and it's color screen, and trying to be a second phone on your wrist with beefy specs. While the Pebble was trying to be _literally_ a smarter watch.
And Apple's way won out. People just preferred that.
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[citation needed]
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=fitbit Betting against this trend would be like betting against toothbrushes and floss.
Unless a fitbit convinces my insurance company to drop their rates in half, I'm not saving thousands. If I google insurance savings I see... they'll get me a moderate discount on the fitbit itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ROI argument is approximately that allocating $200 for health watches for everyone AND cutting $2,000 across the board everywhere else in healthcare That sounds a lot like taking $2000 from an elderly cohort (where savings today would mostly come from), and spending $200 on a younger cohort (who would eventually get the $2000 health gains!). Your statement needs far more qualification on who would pay the costs, an…
The gist of what I got from the post you're replying to, which I agree wasn't well fleshed out, is this: If everyone gets a $200 smart watch, and 1/10th of those people avoid obesity, we can avoid $20,000 a year in diabetic care and heart surgery and hip replacement for them when they get to be 60. Completely made up numbers of course, but speaking as one smartwatch wearer, the nudges built into the system play a sig…
Oh, I completely agree that that is a realistic and worthwhile scenario.
I just think that lifetime health costs in dollars do not decrease.
Let’s say we get 1/10th less diabetes due to subsidised watches. The total number of people with chronic diseases remains constant because we just get a different chronic disease on average (because we all die of something!). So the $2000 saved is just spent elsewhere. Ignoring potential savings we could make by increasing the number of sudden deaths and decreasing chronic conditions.
Or from another angle, at an individual level many spend all they have on their final healthcare costs so our individual spending remains the same, and at a government level total healthcare spending mostly remains constant regardless of health improvements or lack thereof (e.g. we spend close to 0% on polio these days – however healthcare costs didn’t decline and instead other health costs substituted instead).
Now, quality and length of life may improve, but total spending has not changed. I suspect I lack the economic language for talking about situations where we need to optimise for cost substitutions and quality of life. I do believe that optimisation of healthcare for an economy just using dollars as inputs to the objective function would fail us miserably.
I find it really hard to think about healthcare costs, because it just doesn’t work like my intuitions might expect about saving money.
Edit: the original post “U.S. per capita healthcare spending is $11,172. If the U.S. gave everyone a $200 a year tax credit to spend on a smart health watch, we'd probably save $2,000 a year per capita and get a 10x ROI.”. I believe U.S. per capita p.a. healthcare spending would now be $11,372 (the extra $200 couldn’t be found in the budget, and the amount spent on diabetes did not decrease, the total budget was not decreased.) However people have a better QOL, and are living longer so they are better off, but the economy is worse off because we’ve added years of extra cost to support the longer-living elderly!