People Drowning in Useless Health-Tracking Data
Users are frustrated by the complexity and lack of actionable insights from personal health tracking. They find data collection tedious, accuracy questionable, and sharing with professionals difficult, leading to a sense of wasted effort and a disconnect between tracked metrics and real-world well-being.
SOURCES (60)
“Pretty cool that you went with on-device processing for the cheaper tier, most health apps don't bother and just shove everything through their servers. The sleep fragmentation thing is no joke either, my watch splits one night into three "naps" half the time and it…”
“Feature No mental wellness assessment engine for PHQ 9 (Depression), GAD 7 (Anxiety), or GHQ 12. Fixed in PR 1 : https://github.com/Josiah 27/CECUREUS/pull/1”
“I didn't know about Cyp1a2 and so on that's interesting! It's great that there are different settings around this, but mostly about inhibitors. See you planning on also adding some inducers to the settings list? At least medication; diet is more difficult I guess. I thought that would be a good idea to make it more complete and have a better idea of caffeine levels. Thanks in advance!”
“This is actually a really clean concept, no account and fully offline is exactly what health tracking should be. SQLite on device is rock solid for something like this The 10 second check-in is smart too, nobody's gonna stick with a symptom diary that feels like filling out tax forms. My partner's been dealing with perimenopause and tracking symptoms has been a mess of scattered notes that never make it to the doctor Joined the group and opted in, will stay the full 14 days. Here's m”
“I keep all the health stuff in Apple Health. Personal projects in Notion. A little advice: don’t fall into the trap of postponing the execution. Having thousands of metrics for productivity doesn’t do shit if you’re not doing anything yourself.”
“I'm looking for a way to log the biometric data from my Galaxy watch. Heart rate, sleep stats, etc. I'm really struggling to find a good solution. At the moment, I have Samsung Health linked to Health Connect on my phone. The Home Assistant app has Health Connect sensors, and the HA instance on my server pushes these out to InfluxDB. Even though my watch reads heart rate continuously, I get a new data point maybe once an hour, often longer. Battery optimization is off for everything invo”
“I got an oura ring a few months before my son (kid #2) was due as I was interested to see what tangible changes in my health/ sleep might show up. It’s been fun at 3am to check my stats and be reminded of my total sleep debt and be told how stressed I am! 🤣 submitted by /u/Normal_Kale2454 [link] [comments]”
“I feel like streaks help me at the beginning because seeing the number go up makes me want to keep going 😅 But if I miss one day, I try not to treat it like the whole habit is ruined.”
“Do Streaks actually keep you consistent? Like if I get a habit tracker with a streak, will that help me more? I just want know whether you use streaks or just ignore them. submitted by /u/Any_Mountain9143 [link] [comments]”
“Hope its okay to post this here, on the chance someone knows something. A pharmacist introduced me to a new product (Accu Check SmartGuide CGM) but also „warned“ me today, that people have reported the insertion being significantly (!) more painful because the needle is much thicker. I’ve never had any issues with the FreeStyle Libre in terms of insertion / pain, but their sensor failure rate has not been great lately. The Accu-Chek would also be cheaper for me. Im worried about the pain warning”
“I’ve found the useful question isn’t “How do I become consistent?” but “Why do I stop using this after a week?” Usually there’s too much friction or I’m tracking things I don’t actually use later.”
“Hi Owen, A second improvement I would find very useful is support for Health Connect historical access. Again, I investigated this with ChatGPT/OpenAI Codex and implemented/tested it locally as a proof of concept. Background Android normally limits how far back an app can read Health Connect data. Health Connect provides: android.permission.health.READ HEALTH DATA HISTORY and: HealthPermission.PERMISSION READ HEALTH DATA HISTORY with feature detection through: HealthConnectFeatures.FEATURE READ”
“Do you gain any ability or energy back towards your baseline as your PEM improves or is that only after your PEM is gone? For example, today I had enough energy to get out of bed after being awake for only a few hours. My wife was talking about how difficult taking care of the house is, so I tried to clean the kitchen on my own. For context, I'm 28 and normally use a walker to get around short distances or use a wheelchair on longer distances. This is a new development as of this year, but I”
“Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Currently, the integration provides useful metrics for the last activity (distance, duration, average/normalized power, heart rate, and TSS), but average cadence (RPM) is missing. Intervals.icu tracks this value (e.g. average cadence). Describe the solution you'd like Please add a dedicated sensor for average cadence (e.g. sensor.intervals icu last activity avg cadence) or expose average cadence as an attribute within sensor.interval”
“Found out I'm pregnant 2 days ago and want to track the pregnancy. I used natural cycles as birth control, and then used it while TTC, but the pregnancy version seems pretty lame. What are you using to track your pregnancy? submitted by /u/presentlywell [link] [comments]”
“The problem I kept hitting: Apple Health is a vault, not an API. Years of sleep, HRV, workouts and steps sit on my phone, and the only way out is an XML export that is painful to parse and stale the moment you generate it. I wanted to just ask an assistant "how has my resting heart rate trended since I started lifting" and have it read the real data. What I shipped: HealthAPI, an iOS app that syncs HealthKit (read-only) to a hosted personal REST API. You install it, grant Health permis”
“Dose reminders are the thing every tracker gets wrong so good call testing that first. I'll load it on my spare phone this weekend and try to break the notification flow.”
“All-in-one health app? oh shit it's another ai health coach. welp. Nevertheless, I like the UI and the "ask vora" feature works pretty well!”
“Thank you so much for the feedback! The correlation between different scopes and factors is one of the main problem I’m working on to solve at the moment! And thank you so much for offering to test too, Dm you the link now :)”
“The niche: menopause/HRT tracking. The finding that hooked me: the top 10 apps for "menopause tracker" average 3.78 stars, and their 1-star reviews have been requesting the same five features since 2019 — a month-view calendar, one-tap timestamped logging, HRT dose + lab tracking, working Apple Health sync, and no forced account. The incumbents are a buggy funded app pointed at a clinic-referral funnel and an abandoned app throwing 503s. So I made Fember. SwiftUI + SwiftData, local-fir”
“Glad the Health Connect approach lands well — that was deliberate, reading from what's already there instead of making you OAuth into each device separately. On barometric pressure: right now the correlation card looks back over the past 14 days (not just today) and correlates your dream vividness against precipitation and temperature to surface things like "your dreams score X pts higher on rainy nights." Pressure itself is captured at the moment you log each dream and gets woven”
“Are you tracking your calories somewhere that links to your Apple Health app? If so, and if that's connected to ChatGPT (which is the case for me), that could explain it.”
“Sleep scores, readiness scores, HRV, and other metrics can reveal patterns we might otherwise miss. But they can also change how we feel about the day before it even starts. A low score can make a decent morning feel worse, while a high score may not match how exhausted we actually feel. Have recovery metrics improved your body awareness, or made it harder to trust how you feel? submitted by /u/Winter-Big7642 [link] [comments]”
“Kinda. There were many attempts at something that would help me track everyday things, like workout routines, home to-dos, mindfulness routines and such.. those all died. But the result was that from almost every one of those i got some useful bit and the result is a "hub" of sorts that I built with several functions and databases. Rn my "homepage" has quick access to side projects, studying material, an important data page, budget tracking.. this homepage I use everyday for”
“Hi everyone! I just started using a data aggregator for all my health data, like my Whoop data, labs, Apple Health data, etc. I think the insights are cool, and they are pretty accurate as far as I'm aware. I think the coolest thing is that it's able to look at all my data, look at the timelines, and develop trends using data from each of the sources and link them together. And then give me actionable insights to improve my health. I'm just wondering if anyone has used something like”
“My personal life setup is pretty minimal so I do actually use it daily. It only contains what I actually need. I’m never looking back on a habit tracker so I don’t use one.”
“Expecting our first any day now and I've been thinking about whether a tracking app is right for us. In general, I'm taking a "less is more" approach to most baby tech - I tend to get anxious and don't like the idea of getting too focused on minor issues or misleading info (for example, how some of the tracking socks tend to flag things unnecessarily). At the same time, I know apps can be useful for staying on top of # of diaper changes and timing feedings. Not looking for”
“just gave it a spin on my pixel, the bpm locked on way faster than i expected, maybe 8-10 seconds? the waveform is smooth but the bp estimation gave me a slightly higher reading than my cuff, though i know these camera methods are more about tracking trends than absolute numbers interface is clean, no bloat, i dig that it doesn't demand an account just to try it out”
“Hi all — hoping this is okay to post here, happy to take it down if not. Bit about me as ive never posted on here before: My name is dan im 31 yrs old and i was born with the HNF1B gene mutation and currently have mody 5 diabetes and various other problems with kidneys and pancreatic enzyme inssuficency. I live in the south east of the uk and have had diabetes since i was about 13-14 years old. Quick disclaimer upfront: I'm not a medical professional, this is a personal/hobby project, and it”
“Every calorie app I've used treats your target as a constant. Mifflin-St Jeor on day one, multiply by an activity factor you guessed at, done forever. But the plant you're controlling isn't constant. Maintenance drifts down as you lose mass, NEAT sags in a deficit, and the activity factor was a lie the day you picked it. So I built the target as a controller with three loops running at different time constants, kept deliberately separate so they can't fight each other. **Daily, u”
“Yes, I am beginning to see how hard it is. To be honest I am a professional swe, but never developed an app before. I can’t fathom how to build a distribution channel as i don’t have an audience at all”
“It is, isn't it. Likely nothing to be fair, but that's what I've been testing with.”
“This is exactly what I was looking for. The Health Connect integration without needing separate OAuth for each device is smart, most apps make you jump through so many hoops just to get your own data in. The barometric pressure correlation with sleep is interesting angle. I noticed my sleep gets worse before storms but never had way to track it properly. Does it show historical patterns or just daily correlations? Also curious about the AI dream journal, is the analysis actually useful or just p”
“I posted a few weeks ago to share my bloodwork results from last year. Those results showed a very strong heart health (APOB, Cholesterol Profile, triglycerides etc) and metabolic (5.3% A1c), but concerns around high-inflammation, low ferritin, low vitamin D, low free testosterone. I drew updated results and there are some interesting updates. A few markers trended worse but overall the cardio and metabolic markers are in a good spot. The smaller negative movements are probably from reducing car”
“I recently feel exhausted from work but I am not sure whether I am really burnout "technically". I am currently monitoring my sleep quality using fitbit and it seems the quality just fluctuate a lot while I do get some good sleep but also bad ones from time to time. There are a lot of time I feel lack of energy and back pain but acknowledgeably I do feel better after I work out (e.g. a short run, hiking) a bit. However the exhaustion seems just a weighted shadow that keeps following me”
“Great job With Claude/ChatGPT writing this post. 👍 Curious about the privacy implications - this seems like a privacy nightmare to manage.”
“Started wearing a continuous glucose monitor mostly to have more data about myself, no diagnosis prompting it. Checked it on a whim after lunch one day: 240 mg/dL. Felt totally fine. Was in a meeting, normal conversation, zero symptoms. The gap between the number and how I actually felt was unsettling once I sat with it. Anyone else tracking something (glucose or otherwise) where the data and the subjective experience just don't line up at all? Curious how people reconcile that. submit”
“Yes I would. This sounds like a genuinely great idea. Do you have something in the works or are you just gathering info currently?”
“It's been hitting me lately that I've forgotten a lot of my biostatistics basics (please tell me I'm not the only one...). I was wondering if anyone has recommendations for a good biostats refresher course/book/video? There's quite a few review videos on youtube but if anyone has any personal experience with one that they liked or felt was especially relevant for pharmacy, I'd love the hear it. Thanks! submitted by /u/kiwistarbaby [link] [comments]”
“Hi! I am wondering if any RDs/CDCES have experience using these apps SNAQ, undermyfork, Mysugr? And if you would recommend it even briefly to get a better food recall from your patients? Is it only suitable for certain demographic, or is it unsuitable? Any insight into these apps would be great. I read about them and I downloaded em I just wanted to know what is the consensus. Just thinking of different strategy to collect better data in an outpatient setting. Thanks! submitted by /u”
“Anything that writes to Health Connect could use the same flow. Apple Watch does not, but surely it would back up to iCloud or something and your job could fetch it from there. I'll get back to you. Note the entire health dashboard is one custom built plugin. So is the shortcuts/bases launcher in the right side-bar. Are you interested in something else you see in particular?”
“I caught myself checking whether a handlebar body-composition scale was available more often than I was thinking about the measurements themselves. That feels like a sign to slow down. For anyone who uses this kind of device, did the extra data become part of a simple routine, or did it mostly become another dashboard to check? submitted by /u/Last_Enthusiasm_4834 [link] [comments]”
“i've been on peptides for years. once i was on more than one, a spreadsheet was dumb, and the apps i tried all assumed a single weekly glp-1. shipped poke this month. iphone shot log, no account, data stays on the phone. i use it myself. looking for honest feedback, especially from anyone logging more than one compound. what's broken, what's missing. https://apps.apple.com/app/id6764757185 submitted by /u/whitewolf_blackbeard [link] [comments]”
“I want to run this properly rather than deciding by vibe after three weeks. The obvious problem is that everything else in my life moves at the same time, and the outcome I care about is slow enough to hide inside that noise. I have a wearable and I am willing to keep a log for a few months. Has anybody built a protocol for this that survived contact with reality? submitted by /u/truecakesnake [link] [comments]”
“The Owlet gives 10 minute averages for heart rate and oxygen. My 7.5 month old usually has average heart rate readings of 100+ when sleeping. Sometimes those averages are in the 90s. She has had sparse 10 minute averages in the high 80s, but they’re never sustained beyond that. Last night, she had an hour of average readings in the 80s. Her o2 averaged 99-100% and the monitor said she was in deep sleep. On one hand, she hadn’t napped (thanks, teething) so we’d given her Motrin and she’d finally”
“I’m curious how people here are treating cuffless blood-pressure estimates from wearables. I like having a rough trend alongside sleep, activity, and heart-rate data, but blood pressure feels different from most wearable metrics because it can influence actual health decisions. I only want it as a trend signal, not a replacement for a cuff. If you use one, have you compared it against a conventional monitor over time? What made it useful, or made you stop paying attention to it? submitted”
“I keep seeing the same argument split a thread in two. One group sleeps around 5.5 to 6 hours, feels fine, and resents being told that isn't enough. Another group says the tracker was right and they'd been under-slept for years without knowing it. Both can't be the default. So for anyone who's been on either side: when something told you your sleep wasn't enough, what did you want it to do - measure you against your own baseline, or push back with the population evidence? And”
“I was this person - up at 3am unable to sleep sleuthing on reddit for answers to my woes. I was rigorous in testing and getting to the bottom of why I couldn't sleep, why my skin was insane and why out of countless doctors everyone just kept telling me every test was "normal". I'm a product manager for work - I've been doing it for over 10 yrs and I decided I was going to build something to help with this situation instead of using excel and countless apps that all tracked”
“I’m working on a small QS-style question and would love feedback from this community: **Can short subjective daily logs make wearable data more useful?** Most wearables already capture sleep, activity, heart rate, HRV, recovery, etc. But in my own tracking, the missing layer is often context: - Was today stressful because of work, travel, alcohol, food, conflict, or poor sleep? - Did I feel low-energy despite “good” recovery numbers? - Did a pattern show up only after combining subjective notes”
“So I've been trying to make sense of my heart rate data from pickleball and honestly it's kind of a mess lol. Most tracking assumes a steady effort curve like running or cycling, but pickleball is basically bursts the whole time. Quick intense rally, then standing around for a bit, repeat for an hour. End result is my average HR looks pretty chill for the whole session even on days I was completely gassed, just because all the standing-around time drags the average down. And the zone min”
“I want to put my disclaimers front and centre here that this post is in no way passing judgement on anyone’s parenting decisions with regards to sleep or other practices. I myself make decisions based on both the national guidelines and what is best for my family which at times means not following the guidelines, for example exhaustion driving us to bed share on some nights, not running the bedroom at 20 degrees or below etc. However, I want to talk about the SIDS risk calculator and the impact”
“Let us be entirely honest for a second. We spend all day building tech that is supposed to make life better, but it is quietly ruining our physical health. A few months ago, I checked my fitness tracker and realized I was barely hitting 2000 steps. I was basically fusing with my office chair. The irony hit me hard: the technology I was working on was the exact thing making me completely sedentary. So, I decided to fight fire with fire and use AI to force myself to move. I built a local vision pi”