Exclusive: 'We want to keep people away from doctors': Why Samsung has gone all-in on AI health, according to its executives — but do users trust it? | Tech Radar
Overview
News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets
Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more
Details
Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards.
Unlock instant access to exclusive member features.
Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.
Exclusive: 'We want to keep people away from doctors': Why Samsung has gone all-in on AI health, according to its executives — but do users trust it?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
AI is everywhere, which is exciting for some and concerning for others — and nowhere is this dichotomy more prevalent than health. AI has the ability to enable huge leaps in healthcare, both at home on your phones and smartwatches, and in the medical industry advancing tools and research using vast corpuses of training data. However, given that AI relies on harvesting data to train the next generation of models, its use of sensitive personal information is under intense scrutiny.
Samsung, unsurprisingly, is all-in on AI. On 22 July during Samsung Galaxy Unpacked, we saw how AI was being used across Samsung's ecosystem, especially on the Samsung Health app and wearables like the Samsung Galaxy Watch. It's crunching the data you give it to help notify you of problems such as sleep apnea, irregular heart rhythms, and even common illnesses such as a cold.
It's not the only big tech company to dive head-first into AI health: Google's done it too with the revamp of its Google Health app, retooling its premium tier into a Chatbot called the Google Health Coach.
Some people don't trust AI with their health information, as our writer David Nield illustrates, and some AI companies' cavalier use of user data has clearly got users worried. Is the pivot to AI in health happening too quickly? Do we have appropriate safeguards in place yet? And is your data being mined without your consent?
Samsung Galaxy Watch users are getting a completely redesigned, AI-first app for a 'personalized experience'
Google Health has taken over from Fitbit but I still don't trust AI
We got a first look at Samsung Intelligent Eyewear, the smart glasses entering a fraught market worried about privacy
During Samsung Galaxy Unpacked, I got to conduct a one-on-one interview with Annika Bizon, VP of Product and Marketing for Mobile Experience at Samsung, and ask her about Samsung's strategy when it comes to AI and healthcare — including how it's intending to safeguard their user's valuable data.
"The user is in control, right?," she tells me, "you opt-in to decide what you want something to understand around your health. You're in control through your fame and through the Samsung health app. That's number one. AI is there to assist you and make your experience better."
Bizon and her team also clarified that all Samsung Health features are usable whether you choose to share your data or not. This attempt to reassure Samsung users about trust and privacy echoed all throughout the Unpacked conference: when I approached someone to talk about Samsung's new Intelligent Eyewear smart glasses, the first bit of sales spiel I got was centered on privacy and transparency features. Clearly, Samsung and its partners at Google are keen to avoid the growing backlash against smart specs.
This continued during a Health Forum attended by journalists. Speaking about medical advances powered by Samsung and AI, Rohit Ali, Head of the Technology Incubation Lab at Samsung R&D Institute UK, said during the panel, "as long as we ensure that data is private, trust can be viable. We at Samsung completely believe that data belongs to the user, and we are just custodians."
Bizon said Samsung's approach is "if it's got AI involved in it, you're in control," with the ability to toggle the data you share and the data you don't. However, she did then go on to say that when users start to use these features, that "you realize you don't want to 'not opt-in' because it's giving you better understanding of your health situation." Without opting in to using the AI features, you're not getting everything Samsung Health has to offer.
I've been using Google Health's new AI Coach for a week — here's 3 things I liked about the Fitbit Premium revamp (and 2 I really didn't)
Google's future for healthcare has AI for both the clinician and the patient
How healthcare practices should evaluate AI vendors
Watch: Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 / Watch 9 hands-on
"Gone are the days of 10,000 steps and eight hours' sleep," said Bizon, telling me that old-fashioned blanket advice was never suitable for everyone. "We're in a space of 'your health, your way', and that's where AI and incredible sensor technology innovation brings those two together.
"We want to keep people away from doctors. We want to give people small nudges so they can make their lives better."
Bizon is talking about AI picking up on your body's trends and seeing things before they happen, with preventative health features ensuring people don't necessarily need doctors — and when they do, they're catching things like heart problems early.
The new Vitals feature is the key to this, which tracks five different metrics, many of them based on heart health, while you sleep with a Samsung watch or Galaxy Ring on. "Through things like understanding how your respiratory system is working, it might tell you that might be coming down with a cold," says Bizon, "and therefore, you can manage that. You might go, 'I need to have more vitamins' or 'I need to sleep a bit more', or 'I might not go to the gym tomorrow'.
"Little triggers and little nudges, right the way through to understanding your heart health in way more detail. Your ECG is taken while you're sleeping. And then that is, you know, even endorsed by the MHRA [the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency], which means that you can send that directly directly to your doctor."
An AI nutrition tracking feature will also be launching in beta on Samsung Health very soon, which allows you to take a photo of your plate and it'll log an estimation of your macros like Google Health and Garmin Connect does. These coupled with the Antioxidant Index on watches, which Bizon says help users "understand what you're putting in your body, so that you can manage your overall health in a better way", have the potential to become quite a powerful set of nutrition features across the Samsung ecosystem.
This preventative health design is part of Samsung's desire to keep people away from doctors, as Bizon puts it, and empower its users to lead healthier lives. It just might work, too — as long as that all-important trust and faith in Samsung's ability to keep its user's health data private is maintained.
During Samsung's Health Forum, Samsung's Head of Digital Health Dr Hon Pak said "whether it's data or the insights we derive, someone has to trust this is right for them. And then there's the issue of what we're doing to store and use that data appropriately, because once you lose trust, nothing else matters."
Samsung is being very careful and conscious with all its trust-first messaging, and it's paying attention to controversies involving other companies like Meta. The success of its plans for AI health all depend on this.
Follow Tech Radar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course, you can also follow Tech Radar on You Tube and Tik Tok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on Whats App too
Matt is Tech Radar's expert on all things fitness, wellness and wearable tech.
A former staffer at Men's Health, he holds a Master's Degree in journalism from Cardiff and has written for brands like Runner's World, Women's Health, Men's Fitness, Live Science and Fit&Well on everything fitness tech, exercise, nutrition and mental wellbeing.
Matt's a keen runner, ex-kickboxer, not averse to the odd yoga flow, and insists everyone should stretch every morning. When he’s not training or writing about health and fitness, he can be found reading doorstop-thick fantasy books with lots of fictional maps in them.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Someone polled 4K Blu-ray player owners about the reliability of different models over time
I've hunted out the best Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 cases to keep your phone safe
Ukraine's new Marichka AI targets the one layer of its war stack that Palantir still owns
Cherry XTRFY K63W Pro Compact Ultra-Wideband review: a unique keyboard that may prove divisive
New 10.1-inch Touch Display 2 gives Raspberry Pi users more room for their projects
Tech Radar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.
© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
Key Takeaways
- News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets
- Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more
- Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards
- Unlock instant access to exclusive member features
- Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards
