They're Selling Your Brain, And Calling It Healthcare.
- Michael Routhier
- 13 hours ago
- 7 min read
I want to start with something Marcus Aurelius wrote.
"The second rule is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."
Not what they claim to be. Not what the marketing says when you're scared and searching for something, anything, that might protect someone you love. What they actually are.
That's what today's post is about.
This One Hits Different
I don't usually open with a disclaimer, but I need to here.
This topic made me angry. Not annoyed, not mildly frustrated, genuinely angry. And if you're a caregiver, if you have a family member with epilepsy, if you have a child with autism, or if you're the person in your family who handles the technology decisions for someone who can't, I need you to read every word of this.
Because there are companies out there right now, marketing themselves as the answer to your fear. And they are not primarily in the business of helping you.
They are in the business of collecting your family member's brain data and selling it.
The Business Model Nobody Is Naming
I want to be very clear about something. I'm not calling out one specific company. I'm describing a pattern; a business model that is spreading through the medical wearable industry. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
Here's how it works.
Step one: Find a vulnerable population. Epilepsy patients. Autism families. Caregivers of people with dementia. People who are frightened, underserved by the existing medical system, and actively searching for something better.
Step two: Build a product. Usually a wearable; a headband, a smartwatch, a sensor patch. Something that looks high-tech, connects to an app, and has the words "AI-powered" somewhere in the description. The website features smiling families. The word "pioneering" appears at least twice.
Step three: Market it directly to those frightened people. Use language like "predict seizures before they happen", "Give your family member the gift of safety", "Take back control". Make it emotional, because it is emotional. These families are living with real fear, and your marketing speaks directly to that fear.
Step four: Bury a disclaimer. Deep in the legal language, somewhere most people never read, you'll find a line that says something like this;
"This is a wellness-oriented platform. It is not a medical device. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, mental health condition, or neurological disorder."
Read that again.
Not a medical device. Not intended to diagnose or treat neurological disorders.
The same product marketed to you as predicting seizures legally cannot, by the company's own admission, diagnose or treat a neurological disorder. Those two things cannot both be true. But the disclaimer protects the company completely. If the device fails to predict the seizure and your family member is hurt, they point to the fine print and say; We never claimed to be a medical device. You misunderstood.
This is not a technology company. It's a liability management strategy dressed up in a headband.
The Real Business
Here's the part that makes me genuinely furious.
That's not even the main business. The device, the app, the monthly subscription, that's just the front door. That's what gets your family member's brainwave data flowing into their servers.
Your brainwave data is not like your email. It is not like your location history. It is a direct readout of your neurological activity; the electrical patterns of your brain, captured in real time, continuously. Over days. Over weeks. Over months. It builds a neurological profile of you that is more intimate than almost anything else that exists.
And it is extraordinarily valuable.
To pharmaceutical companies developing new epilepsy drugs who need real-world neurological data from actual patients. To medical device manufacturers who need training data for their own AI algorithms. To academic research institutions who need large datasets to publish papers and attract funding.
These companies are selling it to all of them.
With your consent, technically. Buried in the Terms of Service you clicked through at 11 o'clock at night because your spouse had three seizures that week and you needed to do something, anything, to feel like you were helping.
That is not informed consent. That is a signature extracted from fear.
Five Questions That Will Tell You Everything
Epictetus wrote; "Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish, but wish the things which happen to be as they are."
That tranquil flow of life, that's what these families are searching for. Some sense of safety. Some small piece of control in a situation that feels completely uncontrollable. And these companies have looked at that deeply human search and decided it's a market segment.
That's the thing I cannot forgive.
Not the technology. AI can genuinely help people with neurological conditions. Real, peer-reviewed, clinically validated technology exists and is being developed every day by legitimate researchers. The problem is the companies that have borrowed the language and aesthetics of that legitimate science; without the clinical trials, without the regulatory clearance, without the peer-reviewed evidence, without the honest disclosure, and then aimed that costume directly at the most vulnerable people they could find.
So here are five questions you can ask about any medical AI wearable, right now, that will tell you immediately what you're actually looking at.
1. Is it cleared by a regulatory body? In Canada, Health Canada. In the US, the FDA. In Europe, CE medical device certification. A legitimate medical device that claims to detect or predict a neurological condition will say so, clearly, prominently, on the website. Not "we're in the process of seeking clearance". An actual clearance number. If you can't find it in 30 seconds, it doesn't exist.
2. What does the legal disclaimer actually say? Don't read the marketing. Read the Terms of Service. Search specifically for the phrase "not a medical device" or "not intended to diagnose or treat". If those words appear anywhere on the page, the product cannot legally deliver what the headline promised you. Trust the disclaimer, not the headline.
3. What clinical evidence exists? Not testimonials. Not case studies on the company's own website. Published, peer-reviewed clinical research in a recognized medical journal, with a sample size, a methodology, a control group, and a conclusion. If they can't point you to that, they are asking you to trust a claim they haven't even proven to themselves.
4. What happens to your data? Read the privacy policy. Search specifically for the words sell, share, third party, research, and de-identified. If the revenue model includes selling your family member's neurological data to pharmaceutical companies or research institutions, it will be disclosed somewhere in the policy. It has to be. If you find it, you now know what the real product is. And it isn't the headband.
5. Who built this, and what are their qualifications? A company claiming to use AI to predict neurological events should be led by people with neuroscience credentials, clinical medicine backgrounds, or serious regulatory expertise. Not exclusively software developers. Not business executives with cloud infrastructure backgrounds. The technology may be AI. The problem it's solving is medical. And the people solving it should know medicine.
One More Thing
I want to say this directly to anyone in this community who is a caregiver, who has epilepsy, who has a child with autism, or who is living with any neurological condition.
Your fear is real. Your need is real. The gap between what conventional medicine offers and what families actually need, that gap is real. You are not wrong for searching, and no one can fault you for wanting something more.
But you deserve technology that has actually been proven to do what it claims. You deserve a company that is transparent about what your data is used for. You deserve a legal agreement that says the same thing as the marketing.
You deserve the truth. Even when the truth is that the solution you were hoping for doesn't exist yet.
Marcus Aurelius asked a question that guides everything we do; What is this actually for?Not what it claims to be for. What is it actually for?
When a company's primary revenue stream is selling the neurological data of seizure patients to pharmaceutical companies, the answer to that question is not "helping your family".
The answer is profit.
And the moment you know that, you can make a different decision.
Before You Go
Has anyone in this community encountered one of these products? Did you notice the disclaimer? Did something feel off before you read the fine print?
I'd genuinely like to hear it. Drop it in the comments, I read every one.
And if this reached someone who needed it, please share it. The people most likely to be targeted by this business model are the people least likely to have a tech-savvy person in their lives telling them what to look for.
Be that person for someone today.
Michael Routhier is the founder of Tech 4 Grown-Ups, a digital literacy platform for adults 55 and over. The Virtuous Machine is a series exploring the ethics, power, and human cost of artificial intelligence. Find everything at tech4grownups.com.
CITATIONS / SOURCES
U.S. Food and Drug Administration - Device Regulation and Guidance: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices
Health Canada - Medical Devices: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/medical-devices.html
European Commission - CE Medical Device Certification: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/medical-devices_en
Epilepsy Foundation - Seizure Monitoring and Devices: https://www.epilepsy.com/tools-resources/devices
Federal Trade Commission - Health Products Compliance Guidance: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/health-products-compliance-guidance
Comments