• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, July 15, 2015

Microsoft this week released a preview of its Microsoft Health Cloud APIs, which Programmable Web said represents “an early step in Microsoft’s goal to provide programmatic access to Microsoft Health products and associated data.”

From Microsoft: “Microsoft Health Cloud API Preview allows you to enhance the experiences of your apps and services with real-time user data. The RESTful APIs provide comprehensive user fitness and health data in an easy-to-consume JSON format.”

And here’s where I get ahead of myself: How long before this (extremely) personal data gets used for real-time, programmatic advertising purposes? I can hear the invasion of privacy bells sounding already, but it’s bound to happen in some way, shape or form.

If we get to that point, the real-time health and fitness data will be “anonymized” first, but even anonymous data can be traced back to certain devices with a relatively high degree of certainty.

The Apple Watch is a constant surveillance unit on your wrist tracking health and fitness patterns. The benefits are obvious, but so are the dangers. People are freaking out and taking ad tech firms to court over “supercookies” -- just imagine how they would react if it were data about their heart rates instead.

Heck, you don’t even have to have the latest and greatest wearables to have your general health patterns tracked. After carrying around my new iPhone for nearly six months, I just this month realized that it’s been counting my steps and estimating my flights climbed the whole time.

Marketers have an insatiable desire for valuable consumer data, even if they are, at best, largely incapable of wielding such data and at worst, wholly incompetent.

Microsoft’s Health Cloud API Preview does not bring us to the scenario I spelled out above. According to our smart-devices, however, we're now one step closer.