The Evidentiary Status Of Wearable Health Data: Admissibility, Authentication And The Limits Of Reliability In Contemporary Litigation
Paritosh Panda, Sambalpur University
ABSTRACT
Fitness trackers, smart watches and biometric rings are now on the market that can keep continuous, detailed records of heart rate, sleep, where and how you're moving. Users and investigators across different continents have started to submit this data to provide timelines, support or disprove evidence, and to quantify the injury, but there is no jurisdiction to have developed an evidentiary regime specifically for wearable data, courts take existing rules for business records, expert testimony, and general electronic evidence and apply them to a technology with proprietary sensors, opaque algorithms, and dubious accuracy, even from the makers. The article examines how wearable health data is admitted as evidence in the United States, the European Union and India, analyzing the evidentiary mechanisms by which wearable data gets in the door of the courtroom, such as “authentication, hearsay, expert- reliability screening and statutory certification.” The unresolved central question is not whether the evidence is admissible, but how much weight it is given to. The data now comes into the courtroom easily, but seldom in the form of a question do courts ask about the science of the sensor that provides them with this data, creating a gap between admissibility and substantive reliability that the law of evidence has yet to close.
