Facebook Launches New Preventative Health Care Tool
More than a year after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal practically sidelined Facebook’s attempts to enter the healthcare app market, the social media giant is finally launching its preventative healthcare tool today. Online users of the company’s social media platform will be able to get personalized reminders about their upcoming health tests, checkups, cancer screenings and family flu vaccination schedules.
The tool has a simple name: Preventive Health and will be available to U.S. Facebook users at first. By analysing profile data from the user, such as birth date, sex and other biometric factors, the tool will provide a list of recommended screenings and the basic information for those.
For users that have a primary care physician, the tool will send monthly and yearly reminders about the usual medical screening tests and each doctor’s appointment. However, as first data about the tool indicates, Preventive Health will not be using medical records or doctor office information, so all the info should be added in by the tool user.
The tool will reportedly focus on cancer and heart disease issues mainly. As per the tool’s architect, Dr. Freddy Abnousi, Preventive Health will be using data from most of the U.S. cancer societies, the American Cardiology School, the American Heart and Coronary Affiliation and will create a collection of digital prompts made to encourage users to get their periodic vital checks and the checkup appointments appropriate for their age and health risk group. The Facebook tool will direct users to resources for where to take the tests. One thing that the tool will not do, Facebook developers have stated, is to collect the results of any test.
According to Abnousi, Facebook’s position on the tool and the data collection would be “focus on giving people tools for prevention, from the experts, and hopefully they will drive their own preventive care.”
Currently coronary health disease and cancers are the two principal causes of death across the world. Heart disease is the primary killer of women and men all over
This is not Facebook’s first venture into healthcare tools. Its other effort, promoting local blood drives, launched in the United States in June after debuting in India in 2017.
