My employer has decided to look at the state of health of its workforce. It has promised to do this in anonymized and aggregated ways. I will not pass judgement on this promise. I have been given incentive to participate through a cost reduction on my premium. More money for my family in exchange for information. I have chosen to believe that this exchange will be reasonable.
The first step of the process was to schedule an appointment via online scheduling software.
The second step was to show up on the appointed day, at the appointed time. My name was not on the list. The human stationed at the check in table with a human readable printed sheet of paper chose the graceful solution and added my name in pencil, using human readable scribbles. I had to correct one scribble that was mis-shapen. My last name starts with an “eff” and not an “ess”. His scribble referenced the incorrect sound. It could be that my human tongue did not sufficiently differentiate the sound for his human ear to perceive. Nevertheless, I was granted access to step three.
The third step was to fill out a bubble sheet with a provided number 2 pencil. You are undoubtedly familiar with the bubble sheet. It provides a space for human readable scribbles in rows horizontally across columns of machine readable scribbled dots. I had to give my name, this in order for my employer to confirm my participation and to receive my cost reduction.
It was the bubble sheet. It reminded me that here was an earlier form of machine readable interface. Present on the same surface were the human readable and the machine readable elements. The edges of the page were marked with registration marks for the machine to keep track of where the scribbled dots were. These enabled meaning bearing micro-localization. My bubble sheet was given a once-over by the graceful human, to ensure that my scribbles would indeed be readable by the machine. I was given the go-ahead for step four, with an intermission in the human queue.
The fourth step was performed by a human nurse who received my bubble sheet and again confirmed with her human vision that it would be machine readable. She then used a spring-loaded mechanism, held in her human hand, to prick my human finger. I offered my right hand, because my left hand is dominant. She drew a quantity of blood into a wondrous pipette that had a tiny syringe plunger. She employed the plunger, presumably with her dominant hand, to deposit my blood onto a specialized glass slide. She placed the slide into a small electronic device.
My nurse said that the device would “bake” for seven minutes and then return results. She did not say, but I had occasion to know, that this device would return a “lipid panel” for my blood sample. It would read the quantity and kind of fats, cholesterols, and sugars in my body. I have no idea how it did this. I do know that the device has sensors, microprocessor(s), and software. It too has machine vision, and it can read my blood along a very narrow axis. And it can return a human readable display.
The human readable display was clumsy, I noticed. It was a one line LCD display that had few characters. It required the pushing of buttons to cycle through the different results. The device was not networked, that I could tell. A missed opportunity, perhaps.
My nurse used her human vision to read the machine display, and hand wrote numbers onto my bubble sheet.
She asked me my height and weight, which I offered to the best of my recollection. I had not received instructions to come with fresh reliable measurements. I will check myself when I get home. These are crucial for the accuracy of the next step. My nurse recorded my height and weight and scribbled dots on my bubble sheet.
For step five my nurse instructed me to stand and to take into both my hands a small device that looked like a large videogame controller. It, too, had an LCD display where the start button would have been. It also had metal strips where my palms would rest. This, she explained, would be where a small current would pass through my body. Fat and muscle have different conductivity, and so the voltage across the circuit that I would become would indicate to the machine something deep and personal about me, and it would generously share the information with me. This machine had its start button in a place that required my nurse to stand rather close to me to press. I would not be entrusted with telling the machine that I was prepared to commune with it.
I required my nurse as my interlocutor.
It’s just as well. The device gave numbers that required deciphering. My nurse deciphered the numbers, and scribbled the clear text onto my bubble sheet, and onto the appropriate dots. She then pronounced me overweight according to the device, and my self-reported height and weight.
My nurse then revealed that my bubble sheet yielded a carbon copy. Carbon-less, actually, but the result is the same. She kept the “original”, the one with the actual carbon-based scribbles, in a neat stack to one side of her station. I was given the “copy” for my records, along with a pamphlet to read at my leisure.
Step six is one that I am to complete tonight. I will sit at my computer, much as I am doing now. And will log into a protected part of the network of my health insurance provider, and answer a series of questions meant to give an indication of how I pursue my human pursuits. I will do so my moving my index finger across a track pad to indicate my responses to multiple choice questions with answers that will be weighted, quantized. I will enter my unique ID, again so that I can receive my incentive. These responses will be reflected back to me with suggestions about how I can better pursue my pursuits. They will eventually be collated with the data from my bubble sheet, but not before I have been given my personalized advice. My truth teller will be blind, or near-sighted, at least.
My employer will move forward with confidence that they have received an accurate picture of how I in the individual, and we in the aggregate, pursue our pursuits, and what longevity can be expected from us.
Our health insurance provider will move forward with confidence that they have created an accurate picture of my workplace as a risk pool. It may also (or, more likely, will) create a profile for me as a risk pool of one.