It comes down to numbers. The average NBA career is six years, and anything the league can do to improve the productivity of players and extend their careers will be done, and done well. They pay attention to nutrition, have individual workout regimens that are set by dedicated experts, and work on literally every imaginable aspect of life, both professional and personal. 

So, what are they doing next? Applying technology in interesting, if invasive ways. The NBA will install fancy data-tracking cameras before the start of next season, according to several sources familiar with the matter.

The high-resolution cameras record every movement on the court — of players, officials and the ball — several times per second, so that teams can track the positioning of players in new ways. Reports from the cameras include information on how fast players run, how often they dribble, how far they run during games, which players touch the ball at the elbow most often, and so on. 

While the initial push is for performance improvement and statistical analysis, I think the big payoff will be in wellness – the ability to track unhealthy movements vs. healthy movements, the ability to calculate the total cardio burn, the ability to analyze every facet.

My point is that technology is the future "secret sauce" for wellness, and we are moving from version 2.0 to 3.0.  I am wearing a downloadable pedometer – next up is a wireless one that is waterproof. Wearable technology that will be a part of our clothes can give us instant feedback on our health.  As medical transparency arrives, technology will make it effortless.

However, I see a possible dark side.

Imagine an RF-enabled refrigerator that can sense the food that is inside and displays it on a flat panel display on the front, an internet-connected scale that knows which person is standing on it, and (gasp) an internet-connected toilet with bio sensors in the waste stream.  If someone is pre-diabetic and on a restricted diet, the fridge, scale and toilet can watch what they eat, what they weigh, what their blood sugars are from their waste, and gang up on them and call their doctor.  Busted.

Everything I just described is currently in production and available today. I see the power this can bring, but I can see a future where the line between healthy monitoring and over-surveillance can be crossed. Imagine the NBA camera technology watching us in a work environment. Going beyond tracking keystrokes into tracking trips to the copier or the vending machines or the restrooms. Imagine a world of management surveillance, watching and recording and analyzing communication interaction patterns and adding a new layer of data (and a new opportunity to do wrong things, with great accuracy).

So, while I am excited about the possibilities of applying technology well to wellbeing, I am cognizant we have the constant challenge to not over-apply it. I realize that some of these predictions are a bit dark, but it's important we get it right. I watched a major wellness initiative crash and burn at a large employer because the employees did not understand the purpose for gathering biometric data. 

Screenings were scheduled, blood was drawn for baseline measurements and BMI calculations were made, but explanations were not well crafted or communicated. When the process was pretty far along, the employees lit the torches and stormed the castle, demanding that the measurements stop and the data be deleted. They won.

The moral? Make sure we don't fall too much in love with the technology, and keep the communication channels open. Then, we can have the best of all worlds.