Previousplans for a health app were shelved in the wake of the CambridgeAnalytica scandal, which revealed that Facebook had shared thepersonal data of millions of users with a U.K.-based politicalconsulting firm.

Facebook is getting into the health care game.

For now, Facebook Preventative Health is keeping it simple and relatively unthreatening.Users must opt into the feature and in return they get pushnotifications suggesting they engage in various preventative health measures, such asan annual physical or a flu shot.

The tool takes into account a user's age and gender in itsrecommendations. For instance, it might advise a 50-year-old to getscreened for colorectal cancer.

Related: Facebook: A new source for medicaldiagnostics?

In early 2018 Facebook was in talks with hospitals in the hopesof getting access to patient data. The idea was that Facebook couldcompare a patient's medical information with his or her activity onFacebook, since a person's online activity can provide valuableinsights that may help medical providers target certain patientsfor special treatment.

However, these plans were shelved in the wake of the CambridgeAnalytica scandal, which revealed that Facebook had shared thepersonal data of millions of users with a U.K.-based politicalconsulting firm.

Facebook could likely design analgorithm that provides far more personalized healthrecommendations based on the immense amount of information peopleshare online: their height and weight, their geographic location,their exercise and eating habits, their income and many otherthings that an algorithm might take into account when predictinghealth risks.

For instance, it's not hard toimagine a health tool that concludes that a person is a suiciderisk based on their social network behavior.

However, for the moment Facebook, conscious of the increasingfears among the public about its use of personal data, is shyingaway using anything but the most obvious surface-level informationabout each user.

On the bright side, Facebook may help nudge people to accesspreventative health services that they often avoid. Writing inthe Atlantic, Sidney Fussell says, "Whiletraditional health-care outreach apparatuses struggle to helpvulnerable communities, Facebook has already succeeded in reachingalmost everyone: rich and poor, rural and urban, sick and healthy,Rust Belt retirees and Left Coast vegans."

Fussell predicts that as the tool's popularity grows, we'll seea "slow shift back" toward the more ambitious vision of the tool,where Facebook will offer people additional personalization andconvenience in exchange for more personal data.

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