How would you feel about your government monitoring your health metrics?

Reuters has published details of an agreement between Fitbit, the wearable health metrics pioneer, and the Singapore government, to set up a health program involving up to a million who would receive devices from the company in return for an annual subscription of about $7 for a personalized health program, the first use of wearables in a national health program. Singapore, which has a population of 5.6 million, has one of the best public health systems and the longest life expectancy in the world.

The news has sent Fitbit’s shares up by 3% (they had fallen by 90% below their launch price in June 2015). The company, which has faced stiff competition from Apple, Samsung and others, has been working on moving toward selling health services for some time. Singapore’s government will ask users for authorization from October to share the data generated by their devices with the Health Promotion Board (HPB). Apple was among the other bidders for the contract, despite issues related to privacy and compatibility. Fitbit is the fifth company in the world in wearables, after Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei and Samsung, and has been systematically losing market share for several years.

The device proposed for the program is the Fitbit Inspire, a waterproof wristband with capacity to store activity data and sleep…