WiFi signals can measure heart rate

People are suggesting this to continuously monitor vitals. Others think that is a privacy problem. There might be an even bigger problem: continuous vitals monitoring might lead to over-medication and perhaps be worse for patients.

One of the reasons vitals are such a good diagnostic tool is that we monitor them specifically when we already suspect something might be wrong. Monitoring healthy patients reveals the large variation in vitals -- some that might even appear problematic.

We know this among other things because we have accidentally experimented on babies and mothers during delivery. Some clinics have a policy to put them on continuous monitoring the moment they arrive and they get treated for more things with worse outcomes when they're otherwise healthy. Maybe this is confounded (some clinics overmedicalise everything -- both monitoring and treatment) but I like the intuitive explanation that excess monitoring causes excess treatment.

The privacy problem is THE problem. That's the 362 kg elephant in the room.

I monitor kitten health while fostering. Continuous monitoring can be done to establish a baseline. It requires the right mindset, though. I look at the overall picture of a kitten's health while considering changes in status. The "overall health" is the part doctors are missing, because science is systematic (step-by-step) and not systemic (whole system), therefore medicine is systematic too.

(100% of my foster kittens have survived (out of 25) and I specialize in fostering the worst cases.)