A Light Shining in the Darkness: Kevin Ado's Jacket (Senegal). Painted by Regina Holliday at the mHealth Summit, as part of The Walking Gallery.

This year’s mHealth Summit was very, very large (more than 3,600 people from 50 countries), and very, very diverse (researchers, policy makers, health care providers, developers, entrepreneurs).  There was a bit of something for everyone, and numerous outstanding summaries have been written from several perspectives (see list below).  Here’s a quick snapshot of what stood out.

5 Great Quotes

• “There’s 5.6 billion people using wireless today in the world. To put that in a health care context, that’s more people using cell phones than toothbrushes.” – Paul Jacobs, Ph.D., CEO, Qualcomm

• “A smart phone is a cognitive prosthetic.”  – Anthony Sterns, Ph.D., iRx Reminder LLC

• “If you’re an entrepreneur or venture capitalist, I would look at how you begin to prepare for an infrastructure-independent health care world, and focus on basically three questions:  What problem am I solving? Who is going to pay for that? What is unique?” – Don Casey, CEO, West Wireless Health Institute

• “There’s more pilots in mHealth than in the Navy.” – Jay Bernhardt, Ph.D., MPH, University of Florida

• “My hospital parking garage has better technology than my hospital.” – Unknown panelist

5 Major Themes (or most overused words, depending on your perspective)

• Ecosystem
• Disruptive
• Personalized
• Dashboard
• Immersive

5 User-Centric Companies / Projects to Watch

These five ‘Get’ the context angle. They understand their specific audience’s needs, wants, nightmares, and dreams. As a result, they are going to greatly impact their health and/or healthcare by harnessing the power of mobile technologies. (Summaries are abbreviated versions of what appears on the company sites.)

• Asthmapolis Dedicated to improving the management of asthma for patients and healthcare professionals. Asthmapolis is using medication sensors, mobile applications, advanced analytics and feedback to help physicians identify those patients who need more help controlling the disease before they suffer a severe and costly exacerbation.

• BodiMojo  Short for Body + Motivation + Journey, this research-based platform for teens, ages 13-18, offers a personalized, judgment-free zone that promotes healthy body image, fitness, nutrition and wellness through powerful, inspirational teen-driven content.*

• Chronology.MD  A PHR application for patients with Crohn’s disease. This project, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, seeks to help patients create and communicate an effective patient narrative that can be used to increase the quality of the patient’s life and health over time.

• Eyenetra.com A combination of a mobile phone and a clip-on eyepiece that allows anyone to quickly measure their own eyes for glasses. Through mobile connectivity, the system allows users to easily access back end service providers and caregivers for consultation and treatment, enabling a complete solution from awareness to treatment.

• Sotera Wireless A wireless platform for continuous vital signs monitoring that keeps clinicians connected to their patients, whether in transport, in the emergency room or in general inpatient units.

5 Great Resources

• Health.data.gov
• Health Games Research
• hub: Health Unbound
• mHIMSS
• The Walking Gallery

What words, quotes, or companies caught your attention at the 2011 mHealth Summit?

What others are saying about the 2011 mHealth Summit

• Digital Meets Health, Paul Sonnier, @wirelesshealth1 (guest blogger), Popper and Co.
• Impressions from my first mHealth Summit, New Health Rock, The PrescribableApps Blog, @RxApps
• mHealth: Seemingly Stuck in Neutral, John Moore, @john_chilmark, Chilmark Research
• mHealth Summit Conference 2011: Thoughts and Takeaways, Joan Justice, HealthWorks Collective, @HealthCollectiv
• mHealth Summit 2011: A 30,000 Foot View 12/7/11, Travis Good, histalkmobile
• Mobiles Phones for Health Worldwide: Moving From Hype to Context and Benefit, Anne-Ryan Heatwole, @arheatwole   MobileActive.org
• My mHealth Summit Summary, Jennifer Shine Dyer MD, MPH, EndoGoddess Musings, @EndoGoddess
• Recapping the 2011 mHealth Conference, Aisha Moore, Communications Director, AIDS.gov, Blog AIDS.gov
• Successful examples of mHealth applications in Africa…from the mHealth Summit, Dr. Zohray Talib, @ZohrayTalib Global Health MD
• 3 Key Takeaways from 2011 mHealth Summit, Guest post by Charles Huang, @1CharlesH, HealthWorks Collective, @HealthCollectiv
• 5 mobile trends for 2012, Healthcare IT News
• Video Library of mHealth Summit talks 

Related posts

• mHealth Summit 2010: A context check list
• mHealth: Health where you live, work, and play
• Health 2.0 goes to Washington: Aretha Franklin would be proud
• The mHealth Summit: Local & Global Converge (2009 Summit and World Bank Day)

• Self-tracking, Sensors, and mHealth: Trends and Opportunities
• Self-Tracking Meets Ready-To-Wear: Make Room in Your Closet for Smart Clothes
• Self-tracking: Checking under the hood

* Disclosure:  I’m a consultant on a grant to BodiMojo.

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©2012 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

Your LBD (little black dress) is about to be joined in your closet by a SWD (smart wearable device). The worlds of electronics and textiles are becoming interwoven and the results are going to profoundly impact your health. Here’s what you need to know about e-textiles and smart fabrics and a preview of the clothes, shoes, and accessories  that may soon find their way into your closet.

E-Fashionista Vocabulary
Just when you thought you’d finally gotten a handle on terms like ruching, GORE-TEX, and tulle, along comes a whole new fashion lexicon. Forget about SmartWool. We now have smart fabrics and smart clothes. And intelligent textiles, interactive textiles, interactive clothing, and wearable computing. And e-fabrics, e-textiles, e-fibers, and e-broidery.

E-textile is short for electronic- or electro-  textile. E-textiles are essentially fabrics with electronics and other components that are embedded in, or intrinsic to, the fabric such that the fabric maintains its key properties, like draping. (Shown, conductive silver plated nylon thread)

Smart fabrics are generally defined as, well, smart. This means a fabric can not only sense the environment, but also react to it. Scenarios include a fabric that warms you when you’re cold, cleans itself when it’s dirty (hooray!), lights up to ensure you’re visible when it’s dark, and automatically stiffens to protect you when you’re falling. Smart clothes could monitor your fitness parameters as you train and give you advice to modify your workout, during your workout. And of course smart clothes would recharge your mobile device while it was tucked in your pocket.

Smart clothes and e-textiles offer a second skin to help you understand what goes on under your real skin. They enable you to wear sensors comfortably and unobtrusively to track your physiological signals and your surrounding environmental conditions in real time – anytime, anywhere. They are going to influence the health of patients, the training of athletes, and the safety of fire fighters. And perhaps most significantly, they are going to create an entirely new paradigm of wear, share, and compare.

Form follows function and function follows form
Sensors that detect physiological signals may be embedded or integrated directly into a textile (such as part of a yarn that is woven or knitted into the fabric) or they may be applied on top of the fabric, such as in an ink. Since the sensors are part of the garment, they are usually in direct contact with your skin.

The sensors can detect an amazing range of physiological stimuli from you and your surrounding environment. These include mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, optical, and magnetic signals. Once the sensors detect the signal, it’s collected, processed, stored and transmitted.

The potential of e-textiles and smart clothes is best demonstrated by applications in two key areas: health/medical and sports/professional performance and safety. These niches tend to be where cutting-edge development occurs and thus are good indicators of products and technology that may move mainstream (for further discussion on this, see Self-tracking, Sensors, and mHealth: Trends and Opportunities). Here are examples of just a few of the many really cool products that are in various stages of commercialization and development.

Under pressure: Under Armour E39 electronic compression shirt
The Under Armour E39 shirt, developed through a partnership with Zephyr Technology  (which makes the BioHarness), features a removable electronic monitor, or “bug.” The bug is a combined sensor pack, processor, and hard drive that plugs into the shirt. The sensor measures heart rate, breathing rate, skin surface temperature, and triaxial (3 axes – X, Y, Z – thus three dimensional) accelerometry. Sensor data can be sent via Bluetooth to smart phones and laptops for viewing by coaches and friends. The E39 shirt debuted at the NFL Scouting Combine in February, 2011 and is expected to be available to the public in 2012. (photo from Under Armour)

A real kick: The adidas adizero f50 powered by miCoach
Marketed as the “football boot with a brain,” the adidas adizero f50 soccer shoe contains a space in the outsole (bottom) to tuck a miCoach Speed Cell. This tracking device captures performance metrics such as speed, maximum speed, number of sprints, distance, steps and stride rates. The data are stored and can be wirelessly uploaded to a PC, Mac or  smart phone so you can share and compare your stats with friends or adidas professional players. The shoes and speed cell/USB adaptor are sold separately or as a bundle (available in November [ADDED NOTE: became available Nov 11]). The sensor device has been designed to be compatible with other adidas footwear. Expect a related miCoach online football (soccer) video game in 2012. (photo courtesy of adidas)

Reebok and mc10: Flexible electronics
Reebok is collaborating with mc10 to create intelligent sports equipment and apparel. Based on research by John Rogers of UIUC and George Whitesides of Harvard, mc10 develops thin “conformal” electronics that can bend and stretch and that can be imbedded into materials such as paper, fabric, latex, and leather. This is definitely a partnership that bears close, um, tracking.

Smarty pants: Printing biometric sensors on underwear
What better place to put sensors than the elastic band of your underwear? This location enables sensors to be in direct and continuous contact with the skin. Researchers have screen-printed amperometric carbon sensor arrays directly onto the elastic band of underwear. The sensors survive repetitive stretching, pulling, and folding. The sensors can measure hydrogen peroxide and NADH, and could potentially monitor chemicals found in sweat through dehydrogenase- and oxidase-based enzyme sensors (for example, ethanol and lactate). Applications include healthcare, sport, and military monitoring. (Image from the Royal Society of Chemistry)

PSYCHE Project: Updating the mood ring
The PSYCHE (Personalized monitoring SYstems for Care in mental HEalth) project aims to develop a cost-effective, continuous portable monitoring system for patients affected by mood disorders, such as bipolar illness. The goals of the project are to empower patients to proactively monitor their mood status in order to predict, detect and manage critical events and health issues; to improve patient-physician interaction; and to alert physicians in case of depressive or manic episodes. This system is currently being implemented and validated technically, functionally, and clinically.

Potential measurements include:

• Physiological: heart rate (electrocardiogram, ECG), respiratory rate, movement, galvanic skin resistance, brain wave activity (electroencephalogram, EEG), eye activity (electrooculogram, EOG), blood pressure, body temperature
• Biochemical: levels of prescribed drugs such as lithium; glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides and other indicators of metabolic disorders that can develop as a side effect of medication use
• Behavioral: obtained from correlating biochemical measures, voice analysis, and a behavioral index

Potential features include data that are collected along with “subjective annotations” and then integrated into an electronic health record (EHR) with information such as medication; measurement of both thoracic and abdominal respiration through textile sensors, thus potentially offering a mechanism for biofeedback training exercises; and night monitoring of heart rate, breathing rate and ambient conditions (temperature, light, noise) to deduce sleep status, which could be combined with sensorized bed sheets.

Sensors that fit like a glove
How do you measure hand function in individuals that have a neurological disorder?  With an instrumented glove. Researchers have developed a glove that measures finger and wrist flexion based on bend sensors that contain a carbon/polymer-based ink whose resistance increases with bending. Finger movements can be measured while the user is performing specific tasks, and even slight changes in fine motor skills can be detected.

Several commercialized, instrumented gloves are already available, mainly for virtual reality and computer gaming:

• CyberGlove II (shown)
• P5 Glove
• The Peregrine glove
• Nintendo Power Glove (vintage video commercial)

A vested interest in congestive heart failure patients and Mount Everest climbers
Leave it to a group of Italian researchers to develop a vest that perfectly marries form and function. The MagIC (Maglietta Interattiva Computerizzata) is a vest with embedded sensors made of conductive fibers to measure heart rate and breathing rate, and an electronic module with a triaxial accelerometer, data storage, and signal transmission. The washable vest comes in several sizes, is specifically tailored to minimize artifacts, and has a front or side opening with Velcro or a zipper so it can be worn by people with impaired movement.

The garment has been validated in several diverse telemedicine applications. In one scenario, patients with congestive heart failure who had recently been discharged from the hospital wore the vest in their homes for a few minutes each day for a month. The data were viewed remotely by a cardiologist. Patients reported that the garment was comfortable and that they felt “safely supervised.” The patients actually requested to continue the monitoring period!

In a more extreme scenario, climbers wore the vest on a Mount Everest expedition. The vest was made of polypropylene instead of cotton, and the position of the electronic module was moved higher up so it didn’t interfere with the climber’s backpack belts. Measurements were collected during the day and during sleep. Again, the vest was comfortable and provided accurate real-life telemonitoring.  (Image from Istituto Auxologico Italiano)

The ProeTEX Project: Fighting fire with wire
The ProeTEX project is a tour de force of sensor technology and usability. The goal is to develop e-textiles for emergency disaster personnel in order to improve their safety.  End-users, such as fire fighters, are part of the project team, and specific operative scenarios were deployed as part of the process to develop several garment prototypes.

T-shirt or inner garment: This assesses the health status of the emergency worker through measurement of physiological parameters. An elastic region contains textile electrodes for measurement of heart rate, as well as a body temperature sensor. Sensors for blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) and sodium (Na+) can also be integrated. A detachable band contains a piezoelectric breathing rate sensor and the electronic modules. Since this garment is in contact with the user’s skin, comfort is considered a key design feature.

Jacket or outer garment (shown): This monitors the user’s activity state and the surrounding environment. There are two triaxial accelerometers. One at the collar detects inactivity and falls to the ground and one at the wrist also detects inactivity. Together they provide a estimation of body inclination. A textile motion sensor located in the elbow region provides redundancy in measuring user movement. A carbon oxide sensor is located in the lapel area, near the user’s mouth and nose. There’s also an external temperature sensor, a heat flux sensor, and a GPS antenna, as well as a visual alarm and acoustic alarm to warn the user of detected dangers. The jacket contains electronics for data storage and transmission.

Boots: At the request of the end users, the boots contain sensors to measure the concentration of toxic gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2), that are heavier than air and accumulate at ground level. The boots also monitor the contact of the foot with the ground, thus tracking the activity of the user.

The data from all the sensors are recorded in a device located in the jacket and transmitted wirelessly to a remote post where all the parameters of the emergency personnel can be monitored in real time.
(Image from ProeTEX)

ProeTEX is one of many Smart Fabrics, Interactive Textile (SFIT) projects funded by the European Commission and conducted by a large consortium of European partners that includes universities, research centers, medical hospitals, and industry. Other projects include MyHeart, BIOTEX, STELLA, and OFSETH.

Sensor Accessories = Sencessories
While there are amazing e-textile garments commercially available and in development, what any true-blue fashionista knows is that accessorizing is what really matters. Forget about watches that resemble a car dashboard duct-taped to your wrist. Companies are now developing sleek sencessories, such as the Jawbone UP (shown), a motion sensing band that tracks your movement  (or your lack of movement) using technology from MotionX.

Imagine sencessories such as cuff links, earrings, a brooch, belt, bracelet, tie bar, pendant, finger ring or toe ring that you can mix and match to monitor your heart rate, breathing rate, blood glucose, calories burned, and ambient air quality.  What sencessory would you most like to sport?

DIY e-textile Fashion
Do you love hardware stores and Project Runway? There are a number of Do-It-Yourself sites where you can create your own sartorial sensor splendor.

• LilyPad Arduino (shown): a set of sewable electronic components (see the LilyPad Arduino Flickr group for ideas)
• Plug and Wear: tutorials and supplies
• Textronics developers kit
• Lynne Bruning on the e-Textile Lounge and wearable computing (video)
• KOBAKANT DIY Wearable Technology

Wear, Share, Compare
E-textiles and smart clothes are going to revolutionize virtual data sharing communities. In the sports world, you’ll be able to compare your data against the data of your drinking buddies and your favorite pro athletes. Polar provided live race data during the Tour de France and Guinness Rugby has put RFID chips into rugby balls and player jerseys. Expect to see more live tracking of pro athletes during major sporting events (see STATS SportVU video for examples), as well as integration and gamification with fantasy sports leagues and video games.

On the medical side of the spectrum, you’ll be able to share your data in real time with your PHR and with health care providers, giving you the ability to leave a hospital early, or even to just leave a hospital room. E-textile data will be shared in existing online communities such as Patients Like Me and Cure Together, and will provide the base for new communities. The data are going to drive new research paradigms and help us better understand the connection between our health and our environment.

Dress for Success
As you can imagine, there are numerous challenges to overcome when designing e-textiles:

• The sensors need to be accurate, reliable, sensitive, specific, low cost, reproducible, have a short analysis time, a high signal to noise ratio (low motion artifacts), and work over a wide range of temperatures.
• The clothes need to maintain their key properties, such as bending, stretching and drapability. They should also be washable, long lasting, light weight, and should be easy to put on and off if they are going to be worn by people with disabilities.

When it comes to health applications, it’s especially important to pause and consider user context. Life is not ‘one-size-fits-all’ and smart clothes shouldn’t be, either. To be successful, e-textile garments will need to:

• be based on need, not driven by technology
• be comfortable and affordable
• be intuitive to use
• be integrated with health care providers and systems as appropriate
• improve the wearer’s quality of life.

This is a very hot field and there will be incredible developments in the future. Watch for:

• sensors that detect not only what goes on under your skin, but also on your skin. Imagine tracking your skin microbiome to better gauge your health status and disease risks
• advances in data analytics to identify trends and anticipate critical events (imagine being able to predict an epileptic seizure or migraine)
• sensor tattoos
• utilizing data for real-time personal biofeedback training, such as stress reduction
• harvesting or scavenging energy from your body to power your smart clothes. Energy sources include your breath, blood flow, body heat, and foot strike during walking.

Research in e-textiles may also lead to new insights in clothing design for individuals with various medical needs that have not yet been recognized, let alone addressed. There is customized clothing for women who have undergone mastectomies, people with an ostomy or stoma, and individuals with Down’s Syndrome. What’s missing? What would you like to see redesigned? And how can we best reinvent the hospital gown?

Clothes are our second skin. They let us express who we are. Our relationship with our clothes will grow even more personal in the future as they not only track our physiological and environmental status, but also react to protect us and serve to connect us.

What smart garment would you most like to have hanging in your closet?

More e-textiles:

• Georgia Tech Wearable Motherboard™ (GTWM) This is one of the first smart shirts. It was developed in the 1990s with funding from  the U.S. Department of Navy.
• The LifeShirt System (no longer available for sale)
• Somnus Sleep Shirt Night shirt that analyzes breathing patterns
• “Intelligent” t- shirt Washable garment monitors ECG, body temperature and position. Developed by researchers at Carlos III University in Madrid.
• e-textile pants assess stability in the elderly
• Body suit for fetal monitoring during pregnancy
• Le Chal: A haptic feedback based shoe for the blind

Smart reads on Smart textiles

• Smart Textiles Blend LEDs, Circuits and Sensors (Priya Ganapati, Gadget Lab)
• Fashioningtech.com Syuzi Pakhchyan (blog, forum, resources)
• Innovation In Textiles (news and technical resource for the global technical textiles industry)
• International Symposium on Wearable Computers  (ISWC)

Related posts

• Self-tracking, Sensors, and mHealth: Trends and Opportunities (big list of resources)
• mHealth Summit 2010: A context check list
• The mHealth Summit: Local & Global Converge
• mHealth: Health where you live, work, and play
• Self-tracking: Checking under the hood
• 7 Health 2.0 Trends for 2011

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©2012 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

How do you know what’s normal?  How do you win? How do you know when to stop?

These were just a few of the wonderful, offbeat questions that popped up during a session on self-tracking I facilitated at HealthCampDC 2011.

Bring together a group of thought leaders with wide-ranging expertise. Let them debate and question the concept of self-tracking. Suddenly data and tracking take on entirely new identities.

HealthCampDC was one event of many during DC Health Innovation Week. Our discussion on self-tracking highlighted the theme of the week: how do we better utilize data to weave together stories to improve health outcomes?

Issues:

• People are lazy. Tracking systems need to be simple and intuitive.
• Diseases and conditions aren’t siloed. Tracking systems for them shouldn’t be, either.
• Community, sharing, friends, competition – these are all very important components of self-tracking.
• Community, sharing, friends, competition – there are times when these are detrimental in tracking communities and encourage negative health outcomes. Example given: anorexics who compete to see who can eat the least amount each day.
• Tracking sensors are rather worthless if they aren’t reliable and accurate.
• The Quantified Self is important, but so is the Qualified Self. Self-tracking data are not just numbers. Data can also be in the form of images and sound.
• A great example of a successful (trusted, confidential) self-tracking community? Alcoholics Anonymous.
• For many individuals who self-track, privacy is key, and sharing is the last thing they want to do. Example given: people who are HIV positive.
• Self-tracking is not  ‘one size fits all.’
• Just the act of tracking is valuable. Putting down a number or taking a photo raises awareness, which is a key step in behavior change.

Questions:

• How can SMS be better utilized for self-tracking in underserved communities?
• What are the barriers to tracking?
• How do you better incentivize or incorporate motivators into tracking devices?
• Under what conditions would it be helpful to have a tracking ‘trajectory’ to illustrate the path you’re on (good or bad)?
• How do you make tracking data actionable?
• How do you cross the self-tracking chasm from ‘work’ to ‘fun’?

Self-tracking session gurus included Marilyn Langfeld (@MarilynsView), Alan Viars (@aviars), Gregg Masters (@2healthguru), Sandra Paredes, Andrew Rainey (@breadforthecity), Greg Bloom (@breadforthecity), Richard Layman, Rebecca Frank (@frankrebecca), Andre Blackman (@mindofandre), Dave Haft (@davehaft), Eden Shiferaw (Community Education Group), Mark Scrimshire (@ekivemark), Stephen Murphy (@IQSolutions), Joe Lyons (Lyons Advisors, LLC), Baabi Das (Zansors, LLC), Jessica Sachs, Peter Speyer (@PeterSpeyer), Lindsey Hoggle (@lindseybh), Lanny Hartmann (@Lanny). Apologies to anyone I missed – let me know and I’ll add you.

What do you view as key issues and questions in the realm of self-tracking?

Thanks to Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health for hosting the event in their stunning new space.

DC Health Innovation Week Events  (Twitter tag: #dchealth):

• The Walking Gallery #Thewalkinggallery
• HealthCa.mp/dc #hcdc
• The Health Data Initiative #healthapps
• Health Innovation Summit #futurehealth
• Health 2.0 Code-a-Thon #health2dev
• DC Health Innovation Week Proclamation (pdf)

Great posts by others on Health Innovation Week events:

• “Walkers” keep on walkin’, Talkers get to talkin’ and Mover’s & Shakers- yep, you guessed it- Get to Movin’ and Shakin’!, Matthew Browning, Your Nurse Is On
• 8 key takeaways from health data-palooza, Peter Speyer, Data Development
• #HealthApps insightful @TimOReilly hits the spot, again. This time on Privacy and how it relates to the Rainbow button initiative. #hcdc, Mark Scrimshire, HealthCa.mp
• Human being trumps human doing : DC Health Innovation Week recap, Ted Eytan, M.D.
• The Health Data Initiative Forum, Brain Ahier, Healthcare, Technology & Government 2.0
• Health Digital Check-Up: Washington, DC Health Innovation Week, David Barton, Edelman Digital
• 5 Things That Caught My Attention at the Health Data Initiative Forum, Chris Hall, SoHealth
• How a Health 2.0 code-a-thon works, Andy Oram,  O’Reilly Radar
• A New Hope? (…but what about that pesky death star?), Mike Painter, Pioneering Ideas

Related posts

• Self-Tracking Meets Ready-To-Wear: Make Room in Your Closet for Smart Clothes
• Self-tracking, Sensors, and mHealth: Trends and Opportunities
• Self-tracking: Checking under the hood
• What I did during my summer vacation: HealthCamp
• mHealth Summit 2010: A context check list

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©2012 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

“Pretty awesome. RT @ageekmom: @NASATweetup How’s it feel making dreams come true with every tweetup? #burningquestion : -) ”    – Tweet from @NASATweetup, April 19, 2011.

When it comes to utilizing social media to extend a brand and engage, educate and excite an audience, NASA has the right stuff.  That was clearly demonstrated during a NASA Tweetup I attended at the NASA Headquarters in downtown Washington, DC.  NASA defines a Tweetup as “an informal meeting of people who use the social messaging medium Twitter.”

NASA provides a case study of how to successfully showcase science, or any other topic, product, or event, 140 characters at a time. Here are nine tips for out-of-this-world social media, based on NASA’s extensive media expertise.

1.  Treat your participants / followers / friends with respect.
Do you value your followers?  Do your actions show it? NASA sent a string of emails to Tweetup participants (who were chosen at random after registering online) that included a congratulatory welcome; details on the Tweetup (directions, the schedule, onsite tech availability); and a recommendation to swing by the nearby National Air and Space Museum to catch a special appearance of Robonaut 2 before the Tweetup.

At the Tweetup we received an official name badge and a swag bag full of goodies (pins, patches, stickers, fun pads and more). The event started on time and finished on time. From launch to landing, we were treated like space royalty.

What do you do for your followers to indicate how much you appreciate them?

2.  Don’t overlook the details.
There’s no point in having a Tweetup if people can’t tweet. We had Wi-Fi access with clear, written instructions on how to access the network. We were notified ahead of time that power outlets would not be available. The Tweetup, which was easily accessible by public transportation, took place in an auditorium outfitted with chairs that had desks and many folks set up laptops. Cameras were allowed. NASA created a Twitter list of participants (@nasatweetup/astro-wheels) and repeatedly provided its Twitter account and hashtag (@NASAtweetup, #NASATweetup).

How many times have you been to a social media-related event only to find you have no connectivity? If a tweet falls in the room and no one can send it, then no one can hear it and it doesn’t make a sound.

One very important, but often overlooked, detail during the Tweetup was that NASA showed the live Twitter stream, but made it small enough as to be unreadable (see left and right sides of the above photo). Tweetup participants could see that a very active conversation was going on based on the movement of the stream, but the chatter did not distract from the conversation going on among the participants in the room.

How many events have you attended where the virtual stream of tweets and retweets (RTs) overshadows the live event? When it comes to showing live Twitter streams, size matters.

3.  Provide exceptional value: Give people a reason to show up / like you / follow you.
Our Tweetup featured astronaut Doug Wheelock. “Wheels” spent six months on the International Space Station (ISS). He launched to the ISS on June 15, 2010 as part of the Expedition 24 crew. He assumed command of Expedition 25 on September 22 and returned to Earth on November 25, 2010. He worked on more than 100 microgravity experiments and conducted numerous space walks. He was known for sharing amazing twitpics from space and challenging his more than 100,000 followers to guess the locations.

“Okay…here’s one that you may need to dig out a World Atlas to find. Hint: These islands are small, remote, and i http://twitpic.com/2tiaa3“  – Tweet from @Astro_Wheels, from the ISS, Oct 1, 2010.

Other NASA Tweetups occur in tandem with shuttle launches. Granted, not everyone can offer launch pads or robotics demonstrations, but do you provide a compelling reason for people to follow you or ‘like’ you?  What do you offer that’s ‘out of this world’?

4.  Be clear about your brand and identity.
Look at the photo above. Is there any doubt who hosted the event and who is speaking? Take a look at some of NASA’s social media accounts: @NASAedu, @NASA_Technology, @ISS_NatLab, @AstroRobonaut, NASA Facebook and NASA YouTube.

Do you have a clear brand and brand strategy?  What’s your Twitter background? ‘Default’ should not be your answer.

5.  Do your social media homework and practice what you preach.
If you’re going to host a Tweetup, you should be facile on Twitter. NASA has a Twitter roster that includes astronauts, engineers, programs, projects, and yes, even robots.

“@cafferatajm I’m not awake yet, technically. But when I am awake, I can see great! I have five cameras in my head.” – Tweet from @AstroRobonaut, aboard the ISS, May 5, 2011

NASA uses a single hashtag for all Tweetups (#NASATweetup). This is extremely active and builds a sense of community. NASA creates Twitter lists for each event, and repeatedly tweets about the events.

Decide on your hashtag and key messaging well in advance. Promote them across multiple platforms so people can share news about your event before, during, and after.

6.  Repurpose your content and utilize various social media platforms.
The Tweetup event was streamed live over NASA television. You can view it on NASA’s YouTube Channel, NASA Tweetup Rolls with “Wheels”. During the Tweetup, a highlight film of Doug Wheelock’s shuttle trip aboard the ISS was shown. To sum up, NASA refilmed its own film during a Tweetup and posted it on YouTube.

Of course not everyone is on Twitter. Check out NASA’s list of social media accounts. In addition to Twitter, it includes Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. NASA also has created numerous apps, hosts regular online video chats, and has an extensive program of learning technologies.

7.  Be willing to make mistakes, learn from them, and move forward.
During the Tweetup, astronaut Doug Wheelock admitted that initially he didn’t know anything about Twitter, but was “highly encouraged” by NASA to tweet. “What I wasn’t realizing and picking up on, and what you guys all know, is the power and the transformation of this tweet once it hits the internet. And it’s what happens after you tweet that’s the real power in this type of media.”

Colonel Wheelock then confessed, “I had to be careful, because I actually got in trouble early on. You guys were getting these tweet pictures before NASA was getting the official photos from space. So I sorta got the cart before the horse. And I got politely scolded. I got a phone call on a private line on board the space station. ‘Hey, we don’t mind you doing this Twitter thing, but when you tweet a photo, make sure that we have it, … because we get a request coming in for the high resolution photo’ … I had to pull those back a bit and rein them in, and make sure I was downloading the photos so when you guys asked for the high resolution photos, then NASA could politely say, yes we have that for you, we’ll send it to you.”

Don’t be afraid to take one giant step forward into social media. Often times the best way to learn is by doing. (Just be sure you have social media policies in place first).

8.  Be nimble.
Go to where your audience is – or will be. What’s trendy now? Foursquare. Doug Wheelock was the first astronaut to ‘check in’ from space on Oct. 22, 2010 when he checked in to the ISS. Thanks to a NASA-Foursquare partnership, Foursquare users can earn a NASA Explorer badge (shown on Wheelock’s right arm, above) by following NASA on Foursquare and checking in to NASA-related venues. NASA was also ahead of the virtual world social media curve with two islands in Second Life back in 2007.

Where should you be that you aren’t?

9.  Connect, communicate, and most importantly, have a conversation.
Social media is not one-way communication. It’s not posting links to press releases. It’s listening and engaging in a conversation with your audience. NASA responds to questions and engages. NASA understands that people always come first and that social media is only a tool to further your dialog, educate your audience and spread your message.

NASA invests a lot of time and energy in social media. In return it gets loyal fans – lots and lots of them (over one million followers on Twitter, ~400,000 likes on Facebook). NASA’s messages go viral, and even its Tweetups garner press coverage (Los Angeles Times, NPR).

In return for its investment in social media, NASA is educating individuals about its space program, creating loyalty, inspiring dreams, and – based on the beaming faces at the Tweetup – creating future generations of astronauts who may one day share 3D twitvideos from Mars.

“‘Fly me to the Moon…let me dance among the Stars…’ I hope we never lose our sense of wonder. A passion for exploration and discovery is a noble legacy to leave to our children. I hope we set our sails and venture out one day. That will be one glorious day… ” – Twitpic from @Astro_Wheels, August 22, 2010, from aboard the ISS.

Some of the coverage of the Tweetup with Astro_Wheels

• NASA Tweetup: Rocket Star @Astro_Wheels, Beth Beck, Bethbeck’s Blog
• At the @NASATweetup, @Astro_Wheels shares the view from space, Alex Howard, gov20.govfresh
• Astronauta compartilha sua visão do Espaço no @NASATweetup, Claudia Beatriz, Aprendiz de viajante (translation available on the site)
• Science! Space! And NASA Tweetups, Alla Goldman, The Bivings Report
• An interview with Col. Doug Wheelock, the first person to check in from space, Ching Yu, About Foursquare

Related posts

• Utilizing mobile technology and new media to encourage mobile lifestyles
• 1960′s lab life with the Nobel Prize-winning decipherer of the genetic code
• 7 Health 2.0 trends for 2011

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Do you weigh yourself regularly?  Do you make note of your  blood pressure or menstrual cycle? Do you note when your waist size or dress size changes? If so, you’re a self-tracker.

Self-tracking is extremely widespread. In addition to all the organized tracking communities, there’s a growing number of organic self-tracking communities. For examples, take a look at the diabetes made visible community on Flickr, or the more than 20,000 videos on YouTube tagged weight loss journey.

At the same time, sensor technology is advancing at an astounding pace. New materials and fabrication techniques, many at the nanoscale level, are leading to a host of amazing sensors that can be woven into clothes or permanently implanted into our bodies.

Mobile health (mHealth) offers the perfect platform to merge the tracking communities and sensor technologies. Toss in the power of social networking capabilities, and you’ve put the trifecta of instant ‘track, share, and compare’ at people’s fingertips.

This presentation was given by invitation at the 2011 mHealth Networking Conference to review the current status of self-tracking and sensors, and to highlight just a few of the many exciting opportunities that lay ahead.

Resources cited in the presentation are listed below.

What do you track? What opportunities do you envision?

Communities, organizations

• 23andMe
• Asthmapolis
• Cure Together
• MedHelp
• PatientsLikeMe
• Quantified Self
• TuDiabetes
• Tweetwhatyoueat!

Tracking tools

• MedHelp – Health tools
• Personal Informatics – tools
• iTunes app store, popular apps, Healthcare & Fitness, Medical

Sensors

• BodyMedia
• cardiomems
• Fitbit
• IDEAL LIFE
• iHealth
• Polar
• Sleeptracker
• Under Armour
• Withings
• Zeo

Reports & publications

• Healthcare unwired: New business models delivering care anywhere. PricewaterhouseCoopers, September, 2010
• Peer-to-peer healthcare, Susannah Fox, Pew Internet, Feb 28, 2011
• Ingestible thermometer pill aids athletes in beating the heat, NASA Spinoff, 2006
• Innovations in health literacy research, workshop summary. Institute of Medicine, The National Academies Press, 2011
• Boomers, technology & health: Consumers taking charge! MIT Enterprise Forum Northwest, January, 2011 (pdf)
• 2008-2013 Action plan for the global strategy for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases, World Health Organization, 2009
• Yang , Yang-Li et al., Thick-film textile-based amperometric sensors and biosensors . Analyst, 135:1230-1234, 2010
• Abraham, WT, et al., Wireless pulmonary artery haemodynamic monitoring in chronic heart failure: a randomised controlled trial. The Lancet, 377:658-666, 2011
• Frost, J. et al., Patient-reported outcomes as a source of evidence in off-label prescribing: Analysis of data From PatientsLikeMe. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 13( 1), 2011
• Baicker, K. et al., Workplace wellness programs can generate savings, Health Affairs, 29(2): 304-311,2010

Miscellaneous

• Salt-o-meter, The Globe and Mail
• Finally: Self-tracking is cool enough for viral advertising. information aesthetics, Feb 15, 2011
• Push Snowboarding, Nokia x Burton

Related posts

• Self-Tracking Meets Ready-To-Wear: Make Room in Your Closet for Smart Clothes
  
• Self-tracking: Checking under the hood
• mHealth: Health where you live, work, and play
• mHealth Summit 2010: A context check list
• Utilizing mobile technology and new media to encourage mobile lifestyles

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©2012 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

The world of Health 2.0 has so many moving parts that are spinning so fast, that it’s tempting to gaze into a crystal ball and predict what will collide and where it will land. As we move from Health 2.0 to Health Squared, here are 7 trends I see on the horizon.

1.  Nutrigenomics & Nutrigenetics
We’re moving toward the $100 genome, and Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) genetic testing from companies such as 23andMe is on the rise. While we’re gradually learning more about the connection between our genes and our risk factors and our responses to drugs, there’s an intriguing area that has received little attention: the link between our genes and what we eat.

Nutrigenomics examines how what we eat affects our genes, proteins and metabolism. On the flip side, nutrigenetics looks at how our genetic sequence affects our responses to what we eat. Also to watch, nutraceuticals (nutrition + pharmaceuticals), which are foods and food products that provide health and medical benefits. It’s about linking the world of “-omics” with what we put in our mouths, and it will bring a whole new spin to “Eat this, not that!”

2.  Ready-to-Wear Biosensors
Advances in biosensor technology will result in clothing that monitors our every move  and mental state. The information will be automatically downloaded to our mobile devices. This advance will revolutionize health, as the ‘right place, right time’ biofeedback will lead a shift from reactive to proactive health care. Designers will compete to create self-tracking garments for pregnant women on Project Runway.

3.  Groupon Health for Baby Boomers
On January 1, 2011, ten thousand baby boomers turned 65. Each day 10,000 more will turn 65. This will continue for the next 19 years.

Groupon, Living Social, and numerous other sites that harness collective buying power will offer deals based on age, and will target the more than 75 million baby-boomers. This “silver tsunami” is concerned with healthy living and longevity, and they love getting and sharing deals. They already routinely hop online to access email, research health information, buy products, and make travel reservations (Pew Generations report, Dec 2010).

Groupon Health for boomers will focus on anti-aging options (yoga retreats, vitamin packs, golf packages, cholesterol screenings, brain exercise gadgets, pilates classes), and skip unhealthy deals (tanning salons). Boomers will be hired to find the deals for their classmates.

4.  Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
Given the exponential increase in biological data (take a spin around NCBI), we’ll need robust stats that help us separate the signal from the noise, tease out trends, and dissect potential cause and effect vs. random correlations.

Bioinformatics will become a trendy buzz word, number crunching will become a contact sport, and entirely new statistical models will be created.

5.  Infographics :: Data Visualization
What was once the domain of a small corner of the USA Today newspaper has gone mainstream. Daily newspapers now feature word clouds, and Hans Rosling’s talks on visualizations of global health have become TED and YouTube phenomenona.

We’re inundated with data that beg to be made into visual stories. The data stem from self-tracking (Quantified Self) and crowd sourcing (Cure Together), and from gene mapping and global mapping.

We will see even more data artfully displayed. Utilizing graphics to convey health information will increase health literacy and will consistently prove a picture is worth several thousand words.

6.  3D mHealth
New technologies are enabling 3D displays on mobile devices that don’t require the use of glasses. These are created by altering our sense of depth, using auto-stereoscopic 3D technology. This imaging will greatly enhance mobile health applications; visualize the possibilities of 3D for everything from anatomy textbooks to yoga poses. How about a 3D Pillbox?

7.  Transgenerational Social Networking
Many of our risks for diseases may be due to stretches of DNA that are not along our own chromosomes, but rather, are along the chromosomes of our parents or grandparents. This is the crux of the paradigm shifting field of  “transgenerational” genetics.

Research is mounting that suggests the genes our ancestors carried, but that were not passed down to us, can influence the traits and diseases we get. In addition, the foods that our mother ate while she was pregnant with us, and our parents environmental exposures (e.g., pesticides), may influence the traits we have, and that our children and grandchildren will have.

This throws a monkey wrench in classical genetics and merits close watch. While you don’t have to Friend your mom on Facebook, you will want to ‘friend’ her PHR – and your grandmothers – and learn everything you can about your parents health and habits.  And you’ll also want to closely track your own diet for the sake of your health (see #1), and for the health of your grandchildren.

When you look into your crystal ball, what trends do you see as we move from Health 2.0 to Health Squared?

Related posts

• Self-tracking: Checking under the hood
• mHealth Summit 2010: A context check list
• Health 2.0 goes to Washington: Aretha Franklin would be proud
• Utilizing Mobile Technology and New Media to Encourage Mobile Lifestyles

Photo credits

• Crystal ball:  Frozen Bubble, courtesy of sparkleice on Flickr
• Chocolate: Want one? courtesy of MarcelGermain on Flickr
• Yoga: yoga_signed courtesy of shunpikie on Flickr
• Hans Rosling: Courtesy of Gapfinder
• Pills: flickr pills – you should check how many you need … courtesy of eagleglide on Flickr
• Mother & Daughter: Silhouetted Mother & Daughter courtesy of Jerome Rothermund on Flickr

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Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace), Fritz Kahn, 1926. (See full description below.)

Our bodies are exquisite self-tracking machines. We’re artfully engineered with rheostats and feedback loops and switches. The number of times our heart beats in a minute, the temperature of our body, the pH of our blood, the sodium concentration inside our cells, and the turning on and off of our genes are all tightly regulated.

Unfortunately, we don’t come equipped with external tachometers. We don’t have a fuel gauge that points a needle to ‘full’ to signify when we should stop eating, or a temperature gauge to indicate when we are overheating. There is no factory-installed ‘check engine’ light.

In order to make sense of what’s going on under our hoods, we can turn to a variety of tracking tools. Sensors, probes and analyzers help us detect the electrical, chemical and mechanical signals emanating from within. We can measure, track and display with respect to time and space, episode and intervention. And best of all, we get to serve as our own control: N=1.

From lab bench to park bench
As a physiologist, my life has revolved around self-tracking. In grad school, we routinely used ourselves to calibrate equipment, develop techniques, and generally see ‘what would happen if….’  We documented our lives in lab notebooks and every day was ‘show and tell.’

Self-tracking is moving out of the lab and into living rooms and bedrooms, gyms and diners. There’s a rapidly growing community, Quantified Self, that is “a collaboration of users and tool makers who share an interest in self-knowledge through self-tracking.” The site originated with gurus Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf, and an expanding community is overseen by them, along with Alexandra Carmichael, cofounder of CureTogether. There are more than a dozen meet-up groups around the world, as well as an active Twitter community (#quantifiedself).

Long the province of elite athletes and astronauts at one end of the spectrum, and individuals living with chronic diseases (and ICU patients) at the other end of the spectrum, tracking is moving from the fringes inward. Now the bright, shiny gadgets we ordered from scientific equipment catalogs (lactate analyzers, heart rate monitors, pulse oximeters) can be picked up on Amazon.

Should you check under your hood?
Suffering from insomnia? Want to get pregnant? Training for your first 10K? Measuring any number of parameters can reveal trends and provide clues as to what makes you tick. Self-tracking can help you make a connection between what you’re feeling or sensing and how your body is doing.

You can track physiological parameters such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and blood glucose. You can track mental health parameters such as mood and self-esteem. You can track behaviors such as foods eaten, hours spent sitting at a computer, songs listened to, minutes spent exercising, and hours spent sleeping. You can track environmental influences such as outside temperature and pollen count, commuting time, number of friends on Facebook, number of neighbors on your street you know by first name.

The data provide a glimpse of what’s going on under your hood. The measures are all exquisitely intertwined and although they might not represent true cause and effect, when grouped in combination they can reveal wonderful patterns. The patterns tell a story that can provide you with insights and awareness, which may in turn lead to behavior change, thus creating a feedback loop much like your internal circuits.

Self-tracking lets you build a personal dashboard to create a narrative of yourself. It can empower you to better understand how you are functioning, and thereby put you in better control of what’s going on under your hood. And as you self-track, at some point you will cross a threshold where you view your body not only as a machine full of data points, but as an engineered piece of living art.

Great self-tracking resources

• Quantified Self
• What if Self-Tracking Goes Mainstream?, Alexandra Carmichael, The Future Now Blog
• The data-driven life, Gary Wolf, The New York Times
• Know thyself: Tracking every facet of life, from sleep to mood to pain, 24/7/365, Gary Wolf, Wired

Related posts

• Self-tracking, Sensors, and mHealth: Trends and Opportunities
• Self-Tracking Meets Ready-To-Wear: Make Room in Your Closet for Smart Clothes
• mHealth: Health where you live, work, and play
• Twelve Everyday Health Rules–From 1908
• Are humans designed to be endurance runners?

The image
The image above is a cropped view of  Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) by Fritz Kahn (1888-1968). It is a chromolithograph frpm 1926, and is courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, as part of their amazing Dream Anatomy exhibit. “Kahn’s modernist visualization of the digestive and respiratory system as ‘industrial palace,’ really a chemical plant, was conceived in a period when the German chemical industry was the world’s most advanced.”

Inspired by the art, Henning M. Lederer created this video in 2009:

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“Involve end users at the very beginning.” – Walter Curioso, MD, MPH, PhDc., Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and University of Washington

At the second mHealth Summit, over 2,500 individuals from almost 50 countries converged in Washington, DC to discuss the mHealth (mobile health) ecosystem. Several themes surfaced, including scalability, profitability, sustainability, and data accessibility. But one theme continually stood out: context.

Programs that are successful  have several key features in common that are centered around user context. Conversely, interventions, apps, and programs that seem amazing on paper but don’t work, don’t get the context thing.

“It’s very easy to fool yourself that something works.” – Bill Gates, Bill  & Melinda Gates Foundation

Based on the wisdom of the speakers and attendees at the mHealth Summit, as well as at several recent mHealth-related meetings, here is a handy-dandy context check list. Depending on your perspective, your ‘user’ may be a customer, client, or consumer, and may be a parent, patient, doctor, nurse, or community health worker.

A context check list of 15 key questions you should ask:

1. For whom are you designing?
What are their values? Their wants and needs? Their fears? What empowers them?

2. What communities are your users part of? How do these communities influence their decisions, behaviors, values and beliefs?
Your users may be part of a community where they send and receive 100 text messages a day, or they may be part of a community that does not text. They may be part of community that relies on images and stories to communicate information. They may be part of a community where talking about sex is taboo.

3. Are you willing to let your users teach you what you really meant to do and how to do it?
Are you willing to be wrong? Are you willing to be wrong often? A key to success is to fail, and to fail frequently and quickly. Embrace failure and iterate – often and fast.

4. Are you correctly measuring how your users are using your program?
Are you collecting the right metrics that will allow you to iterate?

5. What is the literacy level of your users? What is their health literacy?
“SMS does no good if people can’t read.” – Nils Daulaire, MD, MPH, Director, Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of Global Health

Literacy involves reading, writing, speaking, doing basic math, and listening. Research shows that health materials consistently exceed the reading ability of the intended audiences. “We have the audacity to say people have low literacy skills when our material is poorly designed.” – Rima E. Rudd, ScdD, MSPH, in Improving Health Literacy for Older Adults, Expert Panel Report 2009 (CDC) (PDF)

Literacy rates vary by country, by sex, and by age. They vary by county within a state.
- State and county estimates of low literacy (U.S. Dept of Education)
- Adult literacy rates by country, Human Development Report 2009, United Nations Development Programme (see appendix H) (PDF)

6. Do you know what languages your users speak?
There’s English and Spanish and Chinese. And then there are the specialized languages. Think teen speak vs. senior speak.
Texting abbreviations for the elderly, courtesy of the Car Talk guys:
IMHO: Is My Hearing-aid On?
ROFL… CGU: Rolling On The Floor Laughing… And Can’t Get Up
FWIW: Forgot Where I Was

7. What is it you really want your users to understand or do?
Do they want to do it? What is their stage of readiness?

8. Do your users trust you?
(Have you asked them?)

9. Are you basing your mobile strategy on computer usage patterns or on mobile usage patterns?
The most popular search terms on the main MedlinePlus website (not including the mobile version) include words such as depression, diabetes, hypertension, and asthma (see search word cloud).
The most popular search terms from mobile platforms tend to be ‘incident driven.’ Think pregnancy, herpes, and STDs.

10. Do you know what incentivizes your users?
Is it a colorful flower on a screen saver, is it connecting with others, or is it cold hard cash?

11. Do you know the health status of your users?
Do your users have (or treat) a single disease or multiple conditions? If you are developing a program for a specific disease or condition, will it function in a silo? Should it?

One third of U.S. adults report living with at least one of five chronic conditions (high blood pressure, lung conditions, heart conditions, diabetes, and cancer), and 13% say they have two or more conditions, according to the Pew Internet report on Chronic Disease and the Internet.

Rethink scalability. It’s not just going from 10 users to 10,000. It’s enabling your user to go from managing one health concern to managing three, within a single program.

12. What disabilities do your users have?
Can your users hear a conversation, do their hands tremble, are they color blind, do they have impairments in cognitive function, do their fingers swell, do they use reading glasses, can they be understood when they speak?
About 49 million Americans have a disability, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

13. Do your users have access to health care and health information?
Are your users isolated? Will you be functioning as their health lifeline? Do they have access to information and facilities?  If you provide them will actionable information, will they be able to do it?

14. Are you providing something that your users need to know or do, or that would be nice for them to know or do?
Are you trying to get your users to understand the difference?
Two word example: Medication adherence.

15. Are you engaging and empowering your users?
Are your users able to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”

“It’s about the users.” – David Gustafson, PhD, Director, Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Examples of programs that work because they understand the context of their users

• Text4baby
• Jitterbug
• Project Masiluleke
• Community Health Information Tracking System (CHITS)

A few of the many mHealth Summit commentaries worth reading

• Bill Gates, @billgates, Cell Phone Science
• Tara Cousineau, Ph.D., @taracousphd, Bodimojo, Mobile Health and Teenagers
• Brannon Cullum, @brannonc, @aym, Movements.org blog, Recapping day two of the mhealth summit
• Brian Dolan, @mobilehealth, Mobihealthnews, Round-up: Reactions to the mHealth Summit
• Global Health Blog, @IntraHealth, mHealth: the Possibilities of the Personal
• John Moore, @john_chilmark, Chilmark Research, mHealth: Is it a Market?
• Elisheba Muturi, @ShebaMuturi, Social Health Matters, 2010 mHealth Summit: Show me the evidence
• mHealth Journal, @mhealthjournal, 40 video tech demos of mHealth devices, apps & software online
• Al Shar, @pioneerrwjf, Pioneering Ideas (RWJF), Time to Accelerate Innovation: Takeaways from this Year’s mHealth Summit
• Alex Bornkessel, @socialbttrfly, guest post on Pulse+Signal, In Review: The mHealth Attendee Gaining in Notoriety

Related posts

• The mHealth Summit: Local & Global Converge (Coverage of the 2009 Summit and World Bank Day)
• mHealth: Health where you live, work, and play
• Utilizing mobile technology and new media to encourage mobile lifestyles
• Kids and media use: Letting their fingers do the walking?

Photo credit: BlackMagic by John J. Jarvis on Flickr

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©2012 Kinetics. All Rights Reserved.

This year’s stellar TEDx MidAtlantic was about our choices and roles relative to our true selves, and relative to the world around us. “What if?” was the theme, and the talks seemed to focus on what parts of our brain we consciously choose to use. In fact, images of brains cropped up repeatedly in presentations throughout the day.

“Amazingly, there are cells in our left hemisphere’s orientation association area that define the boundaries of our body – where we begin and where we end relative to the space around us. At the same time, there are cells in our right hemisphere’s orientation association area that orient our body in space. As a result, our left hemisphere teaches us where our body begins and ends, and our right hemisphere helps us place it where we want to it go.”
- Jill Bolte Taylor, TED speaker, from her book, My Stroke of Insight.

Here are some of the What If’s that the speakers left us to ponder:

What if…..

You strive to be a big picture thinker?

You strive to keep your love of learning?

You embrace failure?

You find and use your own voice?

You bring every aspect of your life’s passions to bear in your work?

You focus on the business of happiness?

You strive to keep your sense of wonder?

You look at the world around you with new eyes?

You inspire and reward those around you to think creatively?

You use collective consciousness to solve big problems?

You create and build something lasting?

You give yourself space to breathe?

TEDx Resources

• TEDxMidAtlantic
• TEDxMidAtlantic on Twitter, #tedxmid #tedx
• TEDxMidAtlantic on Facebook
• TEDx MidAtlantic on Flickr
• TEDx site
• Main TED site

TEDx MidAtlantic 2010 Buzz

• Bmore Media, @BmoreMedia, Asking and Answering “What If?” at TEDx MidAtlantic
• The City Fix, @TheCityFix, Live Blogging TEDxMidAtlantic
• Roman Kudryashov, What are these ideas and why are they here?  TEDx MidAtlantic, a brief summary
• Think Tank Creative, @think_tank, Live Blog: TEDxMidAtlantic

Speakers/Performers:  (Twitter, URLs)

• Francis Béland, iprizecleanoceans.org
• Jeffrey Brown, @JeffreyBrown, www.pbs.org/newshour
• Steve Case, @SteveCase, http://revolution.com,  www.casefoundation.org
• Storm Cunningham, @restorm, www.revitaliz.com
• Dickson Despommier, www.verticalfarm.com
• Esther Dyson, @edyson, http://edventure.com
• Nina Fefferman, www.rci.rutgers.edu/~feffermn
• David Gallo, @gallotar, www.whoi.edu
• Christoph Gielen, www.christophgielen.com
• Yash Gupta, http://carey.jhu.edu
• Cesar Harada, http://cesarharada.com
• Bill James, www.jpods.com
• Michael Kahn, www.shakespearetheatre.org
• Paula Kerger, www.pbs.org
• Diana Laufenberg, @dlaufenberg, www.scienceleadership.org
• Ted Leonsis, @TedLeonsis, www.verizoncenter.com
• Charles Limb, www.hopkinsmedicine.org
• Albert Yu-Min Lin, http://exploration.nationalgeographic.com/mongolia
• Tim McDonald, www.onionflats.com
• Matt Mountain, www.stsci.edu/portal
• Iyeoka Ive Okoawo, @iyeoka, www.iyeoka.com
• Sandra Postel, www.globalwaterpolicy.org
• Adam Pruden, www.mit.edu
• Otis Rolley, @OtisRolley, www.updconsulting.com
• Saras Sarasvathy, www.effectuation.org
• Jackie Savitz, @JackieSavitz, http://na.oceana.org
• Susan Shaw, www.meriresearch.org
• Sam Shelton, www.designigniteschange.org
• Roshini Thinakaran, http://roshinithinakaran.com
• Time for Three, @tf3, http://tf3.com

Related posts

• TEDxPotomac: A River Runs Through It
• New Year’s Resolutions: The Magnetic Poetry of TEDx MidAtlantic
• Twelve Everyday Health Rules–From 1908

Image:
Composite image of brain MRIs
Using computer software programs, scientists combined brain MRIs from 20 normal people into this composite image, in which ellipsoids represent normal anatomical variations. Pink purple ellipsoids, signifying the greatest variation, occur in brain regions that are uniquely human for example, regions that control language and logical reasoning. Blue ellipsoids, representing slight variations, occur in brain regions that control sensation and movements. Ultimately, this baseline data on interpersonal variability will allow scientists to distinguish normal anatomical variation from abnormal brain loss, such as that seen in Alzheimer’s disease. Image courtesy of Dr. Paul Thompson, University of California, Los Angeles. Grant No. EB001561, from the picture gallery of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institutes of Health.

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“More than 99.95% of our time is spent outside of clinics and hospitals. Health is where you live, work, and play.”  – John Mattison, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO), Kaiser Permanente Southern California

The health care space was redefined recently at a pair of meetings that brought together a wonderful mix of industry, tech, and health care thought-leaders: Healthcamp San Diego and the 2nd mHealth Networking Conference, put on by the mHealth Initiative Inc.

Health care no longer only takes place with us seated on a sheet of white tissue paper in a room that features magazines from 2007. The health care space now comprises individuals monitoring their vitals in their living rooms and client-provider conversations taking place via email and phone. Health care is becoming less about waiting rooms, hospital gowns and illness, and more about family, backyards and, um, health.

Health care is increasingly being recognized as a series of small micro-choices (think salad bars, grocery store aisles, and the classic elevator vs. stairwell combo) that take place every day where we live, work, and play.

This is an extremely important distinction because:

• the focus is on health and not illness ~ it’s wellness driven,
• the focus on the individual and not medical providers ~ it’s consumer driven.

And by our side 24/7 is a device that is available to help us make micro-decisions, converse with our health care team, track our vitals, and provide relevant health information. This is the essence of mobile health – the right information, in the right place, at the right time. The individual is at the center of their own health.

“You used to bring the patient to the doctor. Now you take the doctor, hospital, and entire healthcare ecosystem to the patient.”
- Healthcare Unwired, PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute, Sept 2010

More coverage of the meetings:

• Gregg Masters (@2healthguru) Live from the 2nd Annual mHealth Networking Conference (BlogTalkRadio)
• Dr. Joseph Kim (@DrJosephKim) #mHealth: Hype or Reality? What needs to be done?
• HCP Live (@HCPLive) R U Interested? Highlights from Day One at mHealth’s San Diego Conference
• Mark Scrimshire (@ekive) Reflecting on #hcsd10 – HealthCamp San Diego

PricewaterhouseCoopers Report and coverage

• Healthcare unwired: New business models delivering care anywhere. PwC report, September, 2010
• Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@healthythinker), Health Populi, Healthcare unwired: nearly half of US consumers are willing to pay.
• John Moore (@john_chilmark), Chilmark Research, Is the mHealth hype justified?

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