Until yesterday, I was feeling so good. I had overcome my knee pain and started running again, loving it like I never did before. I was bounding up the hills near my house, fit and powerful.

Did I really need to know that I was only doing a 10-minute mile?

That information came to me courtesy of a cell-phone app I just downloaded, RunKeeper. It’s part of a new era of devices that continually monitor all our bodily functions, aggregate the data, store them in the cloud, analyze them using artificial intelligence, compare them to the data of our friends or celebrities, and make them publicly available.

I am not exaggerating. On assignment for Medscape, I spent three days in Silicon Valley last week at Health 2.0 Fall Conference, a celebration of digital health technology. The meeting included a fashion show of health monitors inside pendants, bras, shirts and wristwatches.  “We envision a world with sensors all over the place,” said Christopher Glode, Under Armour vice president of connected fitness.

There was June, a bracelet that measures sunlight exposure and tells you to put on a hat. There was Sensoria smart socks that correct your gait. There was Medtronic’s Guardian Real-Time glucose monitoring device that literally  gets under your skin.

There was also an embarrassing moment when Continue reading What Exercise Monitoring Device Should You Use? (Part I) →