LAS VEGAS— BlackBerry will interrogate your blood.
At BlackBerry's press conference here at CES, NantHealth CEO Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong showed off the HBox, a little gadget that acts as a secure health hub. But that's a boring way to describe it. Let me just give you a few quotes.
"You can have a genomic signal that can interrogate your blood, your cancer, your cardiac disease through a supercomputer, and then inform your doctor ... imagine us having an ability like Google Maps, but to browse every single human patient's genome, find the abnormal letter in real-time, and tell the doctor what treatment is to be given," he said.
With ongoing treatments, a patient could have an Android Wear smartwatch that would communicate securely through a doctor via the BBM messaging system. The watch would get and send BBMs alerting a patient to take medicine or checking up on treatments, for instance.
This is intense, amazing, and slightly scary stuff. Think about it: there's a database consisting of all of our genes now. Soon-Shiong also said that with an HBox in the home, your "quantified self" health-tracking information could be transmitted to your doctor, tracking your fitness, diet, and medication.
"We're about to launch 100,000 patients with pre-hypertension or hypertension ... we'll actually capture their weight, blood pressure, heart-rate and medication in real time, through the health box," he said.
Can Our Society Be Trusted?
This is all a great idea in a society that can be trusted. BlackBerry is selling this solution in part based on BlackBerry's renowned security, which is, so far, secure.
The potential problem with the HBox isn't hackers, but employers and health insurance companies. Those are the people who can't be trusted. Health insurance startup Oscar is already paying consumers bonuses for meeting fitness goals and transmitting them back to their insurers using a Misfit Flash wearable.
Science-fiction medical technology like this can far too easily lead to science-fiction levels of surveillance by the corporations who own us. I can see insurance companies—or even employers—requiring the use of an HBox and penalizing patients who don't meet fitness and nutrition goals, for instance.
BlackBerry and NantHealth can't address this problem, which is a larger issue with a society that does an extremely poor job of protecting individuals from the corporations they serve. But the HBox has amazing potential. We can only hope it will be used for good.
IBM is doing something similar, meanwhile. In November, its Watson Group announced an undisclosed investment in Pathway Genomics to create the first cognitive consumer app based on a user's genetic makeup.