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Fitbit's latest tracker is only available through your work or insurance
Fitbit has quietly released a new activity tracker, but don't expect to buy one yourself -- if anything, it'll be issued to you. The company's new Inspire is a fitness band intended for companies that plan to issue wearables en masse, whether it's your health insurance provider or a just a corporation that wants employees to stay active. It's the definition of no-frills. A basic version doesn't do much more than track activity and deliver phone alerts, while the Inspire HR adds heart rate monitoring and phone-based GPS. There's no price listed, but that's likely to vary from deal to deal. It's the company's cheapest device yet, however.
Aetna may offer customers a free Apple Watch as a perk
Health insurer Aetna is already giving its workers free Apple Watches (plus a handful of regular customers), but it now looks ready to expand those bonuses to everyone. CNBC sources understand that Aetna is in talks with Apple to offer a free or discounted Watch as a perk to all eligible customers -- no small number when Aetna covers 23 million people. It's not certain what the deal would look like, but Aetna would like to hand out wristwear early in 2018.
Healthcare.gov users get privacy controls as enrollment nears
Following an Associated Press report in January, the government-run Healthcare.org website scaled back its sharing of user data with third parties. Now, the site will let users opt out entirely as the next round of enrollment opens November 1st. Thanks to a new "privacy manager" feature, the Obamacare online portal allows folks to ensure details like age, income and ZIP code are kept away from advertisers and out of analytics use. It'll also disconnect from the site's social media tools. The website will also allow users to employ their browser's Do Not Track options to keep pesky advertisers at bay while accessing healthcare info on the site. "The internet is constantly changing, and we have an obligation to keep evolving alongside it," Healthcare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan wrote in a blog post. "We'll keep reevaluating our own privacy notice, the tools we use, and how they intersect with the evolving landscape of privacy on the web." [Image credit: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images]
Health insurance data breach exposes 11 million people
Unfortunately, the days of massive health care data breaches are far from over. Premera Blue Cross has revealed that hackers breached its insurance customer data starting in May 2014, potentially exposing both the financial and medical records of 11 million people -- the largest such attack to date. There's no evidence yet that the data has been "used inappropriately," the company says, and it notes that both the FBI and security firm FireEye are already on the case.
Anthem health insurance hack exposes data of over 80 million
Hackers have accessed millions of customer and employee details from US-based health insurance firm Anthem, including name addresses and social security numbers. The database that was accessed included details for roughly 80 million people, but Anthem, the second biggest insurer in the country, believes that the hack likely affected a fraction in the "tens of millions". Its Chief Information Officer said that they didn't yet know how hackers were able to pull off the attack. In a statement on Anthem's site, CEO Joseph Swedish said that the company was the target of "a very sophisticated external cyberattack" -- although medical and financial details were apparently not breached.
IBM wins diet monitoring and reward patent, celebrates with sip of Spirulina
Does your employer offer a "wellness rebate program?" No? Then you can't be working for IBM, which has been bribing its staff to eat healthier since 2004. It's a Watson-worthy idea, because what the company pays out in incentives it recoups in lower healthcare costs. Now, after a decade of toing and froing with the USPTO, IBM has finally patented a web-based system that makes the whole process automatic. For it to work, a person must use a micro-payment network to buy food, which allows their purchases to be monitored and compared against their health records. If they've made the right choices, the system then communicates with their employer's payroll server to issue a reward. Completing the Orwellian circle, the proposed system also interacts with servers in the FDA and health insurance companies to gain information about specific food products or policy changes. You can duck the radar, of course, and buy a Double Whopper with cash, but it'll bring you no reward except swollen ankles. This is IBM we're talking about; they've thought of everything. [Photo via Shutterstock]
