Comment by just6979

That middle ground has been eroded by cost-cutting.

Example: my mother had a cardic resynchronization device, and it had some kind of NFC type thing to enable the full wireless comms mode: wave a wand over her shoulder and the device's radio wakes up for a set time to send data or receive adjustments. So it wasn't always transmitting, but it did require the doctor's office or hospital to have that NFC wand to initiate any kind of data aquisition or reconfiguration. If it has an always-on BLE radio, the provider would just needs the phone/tablet/laptop with appropriate software that is already required.

Since any device like is already going to have a radio equivalent to a BLE radio, then removing the NFC parts from the device (and especially from the provider side) is some amount of cost savings. I think most patients would disagree that this privacy trade-off is NOT worth it, but you have remember that the patients aren't usually the actual customers in the US health care system. (And most manufacturers are going to have the US market as a target at least somewhat.) The most common actual customer is actually the insurance companies, and they'll take every single fraction of a penny, along with "an arm and a leg".