Smart glasses may soon track your health, from your eyes to your face

Smart glasses could soon watch more than the world in front of you. According to a Gizmodo report, makers are looking at features that track your eyes, check your temperature and pick up very small movements in your face. In short, the glasses on your nose may become a health monitor.

What is on the table

Three kinds of tracking are being discussed. Eye-tracking follows where you look and how your eyes move. Temperature monitoring would read how warm your body is. Facial movement detection would notice tiny shifts in your face, far smaller than a smile or a frown.

• Eye-tracking
• Temperature monitoring
• Detection of tiny facial movements

Why it raises questions

Health data is personal. Your eyes, your temperature and your face can reveal how you feel, and the facial sensing in particular raises privacy concerns. Glasses are also worn all day, so they could collect data far more often than a phone you set down.

What is not known yet

The material available does not say which companies are building these features, which glasses will get them or when. It also does not explain how the data would be stored, who could see it, or whether you could switch it off. Those details matter most and are still unclear.

What to do

If you wear or plan to buy smart glasses, ask three things before you do. What health data do they collect? Who stores it? Can you turn it off? If a maker cannot answer plainly, that is worth noting before you buy.