Posts tagged mHealth

I use LoseIT and I am not ashamed of it :), but I also have a slew of other apps that I started and stopped using and when I stopped - my data was left hostage (unless I wanted to re-enter all of it again).

With proliferation (see a list of 100 iPhone apps for Health & Fitness) and increased usage of mobile health applications - we, as consumers, are creating an abundance of self-reported and useful data. There is also Nike, Garmin, and now Adidas joining the family (http://bit.ly/6nFZRE) of devices to track distance, heart-rate and much more. For some people this self-tracking is motivational, for others a hobby and I am sure there is a whole spectrum of reasons that drive us to use this wide array of tools. (What is yours??)

The problem, as I alluded to before, is that it is all tracked in complete siloes with a goal of engaging captivity (while providing immediate satisfaction of pretty charts and graphs).

As an engaged patient I already have my claims records housed at my HealthPlan’s website, I already have my medication history at a PBM  and I am already self reporting additional meds, allergies and other info at sites like Keas & Google Health. I just ordered WakeMate to keep track of my sleep cycles. I paid $399 for a spit-kit for 23andme and loving every moment of it. I already collected copies of all my doctor’s notes. I forced my PCP to allow me access to Quest Diagnostics through Google Health. This is all data, valuable data, valuable to me and valuable to my team of physicians. This is a full 360 degree view into the Eugene ecosystem. But this post is not about integrating all this data into a single view - the nirvana of the engaged patient, this post is only about solving a slice of the overall problem.

I want to be able to transfer my self-reported data such as weight, calories burnt, food eaten anywere and everywhere. I want to share it, and not in any unstructured manner like looseit’s twitter posts, but graph my data across mutliple inputs. Maye I don’t want to invite my friends to join LoseIT - maybe they are all on SparkPeople :) I want to share my data just not necessarily at the point of input. In order to explore the possibilities of self reported structured data we need data portability!

So how do we standardize on this? What standards are on their way, if any? Is an aggregation business model feasible, as a cloud-based service to the slew of “input” devices? Let these apps compete on usability and value added services and outsource the “logging” of data into the cloud.

In order to explore the possibilities of self reported structured data we need it to be portable. Thoughts?