Tag Archives: Forrester

We were fascinated by the conversation started Monday by the release of the Pew survey about self-tracking by Susannah Fox. As with any survey research, the top line results provoked the most discussion, and also some intelligent skepticism. We’ve had a few days to digest the results, and here’s our analysis of the two key questions:

1. How many Americans use technology for self-tracking?

2. Is this number growing, shrinking, or staying the same?

The always reliable Brian Dolan and MobiHealthNews pointed out that according to Pew, health-tracking numbers were unchanged since their last report in 2010. While the questions asked are not identical, it’s logical to conclude from the two surveys that the numbers are flat. Susannah Fox, who wrote the Pew report, states this clearly: “One in five trackers in the general population (21%) say they use some form of technology to track their health data, which matches our 2010 finding.”¹

But wait; if this is true it is unexpected and therefore important. Continue reading →