The Consent Gap Isn't About Data. It's About Who's Holding It.

More than a thousand Japanese elders, families, and care workers were asked what they would let a home-care robot know about them. Around 80% would hand over vital signs and voice recordings to healthcare professionals for research. Only 40 to 50% would give the same data to the companies building the robot. Same microphone, same living room, same recording. The recipient is the decision.

The developers in the study were the ones preoccupied with safety and privacy. Their users had largely made peace with both, on the condition that someone clinical sat at the other end. That inverts the assumption the industry runs on: builders think they are asking families to accept surveillance, when families are mostly asking who is holding the file.

The Care Graph runs on the same bargain. A family fills it in only if the answer to "who sees this" is someone they would have told anyway. Naming the recipient in consent copy is not legal throat-clearing. On this evidence, it is the product.