Smartwatch vs. Body Awareness: Who Wins?
Rasmus begins by recalling the episode with Chen-Chia Pan. She explained how the mobile game Pokémon Go got people moving who would never touch traditional fitness apps: Anyone who wanted to catch water-type Pokémon had to go to the water—even if it meant walking ten kilometers. Traditional fitness apps, on the other hand, require a lot of maintenance and often deliver little benefit. Even artificial intelligence has its limits when it comes to strength training, as shown by a Bremen-based research project led by Bastian Dänekas. Exercise is clearly more effective when combined with personal guidance, such as for very elderly nursing home residents, who became significantly fitter through targeted training following conversations with Dr. Thomas Cordes.
Rasmus sees the growing dependence on data as a warning sign: health data from smartwatches usually ends up with U.S. corporations like Apple or Garmin. The better their analyses become, the more dependent they make users—with consequences for the healthcare system as well. His alternative: a nonprofit, German data infrastructure that enables research without ceding data sovereignty to individual companies. Christoph disagrees; he takes a more relaxed view of this dependency.