I’m only a couple of days into my FitBit experience and I’m already torn. I’m experiencing some technical issues with the FitBit Flex that are beyond the help of the user guide and the FitBit forum community. I’m currently in a back-and-forth with customer service that will likely end with me RMA-ing this unit for a new one. I’m not sure what went wrong, but I haven’t been using this thing long enough to be the primary culprit for whatever is going on here.

That said, I think there’s a tremendous potential with FitBit, when combined with the rest of my data gathering – both active and passive.

Imagine a world where the data from my iBGStar and Dexcom lived in the same ecosystem as my FitBit data. Comparing actual blood glucose values (as accurate as they can be), overlayed with daily Dexcom trends and FitBit activity charts. Then imagine that I had the capacity and determination to document the times I took my insulin and ate with my Dexcom receiver. And then imagine that I counted carbs, and documented insulin dosages within FitBit’s versatile dashboard interface. Obviously the potential for data induced burnout would be astronomical at this point, but the potential is hard to ignore.

If I get all of this stuff working and focused on my daily activities for just one week, there’s so much that could be learned. An effort like that could not be maintained for very long. I think a week at a time would provide enough data to inform adjustments while testing the limits of my ability to want to analyze every aspect of my health.

But, getting all of these data points in a friendly and cooperative environment isn’t something that is possible with how I operate. FitBit only allows three blood glucose values per day to be entered in their system (unless you upgrade to their Premium membership, then you’re allowed unlimited blood glucose values). Even then, those values have to be manually entered, which doesn’t do all of the data collection and analysis done on my iBGStar any good. And of course, Dexcom’s software isn’t compatible with Mac’s.

Technical shenanigans are getting in the way of truly quantifying myself, but that won’t stop me from imagining the potential if all of my devices and gadgets lived in perfect harmony.

It could happen?