By David Shaywitz
The health and well -being of the consumer are experiencing a great activity.
The function of the laboratory test company (motto: “It is time to own your health”) acquired Ezra, a magnetic resonance company from all over the body that promises “the most advanced longevity exploration in the world.”
Oura, manufacturer of the popular smart ring, recently added an integration for continuous glucose measurement, as well as the ability to calculate food nutrition based on a photo. Oura also hired Dr. Ricky Bloomfield as his first medical director; Dr. Bloomfield had previously served as clinical and health computer lead in Apple, and known for his experience in interoperability of health data.
Meanwhile, the Oura Whoop competitor, manufacturer of an intelligent band, has just announced the latest versions of his device, with the ability to monitor blood pressure, ECG and evaluate what he describes as a measure of biological age, which calls “Whoop Age”. Whoop now says that he seeks to “unlock human performance and health,” attracting users with the tone, “get a complete image of their health.”
Towards a personal health operating system (OS)
Do you notice a pattern yet?
What unites the thesis and many others, as recently observed by the Fitt Insider Industry Bulletin (FI), is that they reflect an attempt to generate a “personal health operating system”, aimed at “giving agency of individuals” and more of well -being “, and more of well -being” and more. Perceived (especially by young adults) as somewhere between the uses and obstructive.
Citing a recent Edelman survey, FI reports,
… almost half or young adults believe that well -informed people can be as knowledgeable as doctors, two thirds see the live experience as experience and 61% will see institutes as barriers to care.
Fed up with Reactive careMany already collect data in wearables, lifestyle applications, DTC diagnoses and more, but most are isolated. Enrollando, the function is architeating a unified platform capable or generating clinically relevant ideas from unprocessed entries.
Fi points to the proliferation of companies Like Bright Os, Gyroscope, and Guava Health Focused on “Day-To-Day Data Management,” As Well as startups Like superpower Myth and myth docto and myth) and mythy myth and myth) and myth “generates comprehensive digital health profiles through the fusion of laboratories, medical records, family history, lifestyle information and more”).
AI seems to be ready to play an increasingly central role in many of these companies.
Fi speculate,
One step further, the end -to -end llm could close the loop, link the cause and effect, turning ideas into actions, synchronizing with PCP and establishing the bases for a Future doctor with ia.
This is a good time to breathe deeply, as well as a closer and critical look at this vision of the fortified health health and the data with the consumer.
A powerful vision
Unquestionally, there is much to embrace here, even in particular:
- The opportunity for people to collect more and more rich health data of a greater variety of sources, including particular wearables;
- The greatest possibility of important Insights (a key deficiency of the first “quantified” efforts) of thesis data.
- The explicit centralization of your health data around you (the slogan of superpower is “health data, in one place”), a long -term medical health care objective but often frustrating in practice. Today, still, (still!), Many patients find themselves to pray and defend efficient access to their own health information, data that health systems tend to see a competitive advantage and are not anxious to let go.
An enabled health approach for technology where you have more abundant data about you, which are explicitly in your control, and that could lead to healthier behaviors representatives of the type of progress that deserves to be celebrated.
At the same time, when I look at many of these health approaches, I see two large categories of groups.
Concern one: plural of fragile data may not be an idea
The first, perhaps more concrete, the concern, is that paraphrasing comedian Dennis Miller, “two of [crap] is [crap]”And simply the collection of many data, much of which can be fragile, is not sure to translate into a brilliant vision, even if the magical power of AI enters fervently.
In a special publication of “Truths of Earth” special incisive centered on “the business of the longevity and health promotion”, Dr. Ir. Eric Topol writes that “obtaining hundreds of results of biomarkers and images of images in an individual increases to a large extent the hood of the probability of false”, a worrying possibility.
I have discussed the challenge of the false positives here, and enter some of the details around the Bayes theorem (which information the evaluation) here. The OG reference in this space can be this article 2006 by Zak Kohane and his colleagues, in which they introduce the term “incidentalome”.
To be fair, at least some of the extensive test bomber recognize the challenge of false positives, but feel that the opportunity to collect dens data in people over time allows important inflections to observe, a point that Dr. Peter Attia explicitly emphasizes Survive; I discuss your “risk management” mentality here.
Similarly, Nathan Price, a professor at the Buck Institute and the OSC of Thorne, has argued that the nearby inspection (assisted by AI) or rich individual data could identify (for example) opportunities for supplement intervention. These interventions may not make a big difference in the population level (hence the shortage of data from persuasive clinical trials for supplements, as Dr. Topol points out in his last book, Super agents – MY WSJ Check here), but could in selected individuals. (I also discuss the price here, here).
Defenders of the “Personal Health Operating System” could also emphasize the presence of tail winds, the improved probability hood as measurement technologies continue to improve, the densest data becomes greedy and artificial intelligence tools are capable. Perhaps we are not at all at the point of realizing the future we imagine, the defenders could argue, but we are close enough to begin to see how it would see.
Concern two: a restricted vision of health
What could be said that it is a deeper concern about the health model to which we seem to advance is the degree to which it seems to be informed by a rigidly reductive mentality. In this limited view, classic managerial (or consultant), health becomes a simply metric on a board, a series of constant expansion parameters that must be measured, quantified, constantly quantified.
A recent and beautiful essay on our understanding and evolving approach to happiness in the New York Times Magazine By Kwame Anthony Appiah reminds us of what we lack.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Appiah writes, we enter
The era of the gurus of the optimization of the gurus of the optimization of life habits, such as Tim Ferriss, whose first book, published in 2007, was “The working moon of 4 hours”-“A tool kit”, in his words, “to maximize production per hour.”
Consistently, Appiah continues, the concept of flowering broke down in “modular updates” as we refine our “personal operating system.”
However, it is essential to recognize, writes Appiah, that “happiness is not an optimization problem,” but something deeper and more substantial.
I looked for a similar point in 2018, in a piece entitled: “We are not a board.”
Observing that “panel has become a powerful symbol of our era”, I wrote that “the ideology of the great data has tasks in their own life, assuming a sense of inevitability and autojustification.”
I continued: “From the measurement in the service of people, we increasingly seem to be through data service, establishing systems and organizations where constant measurement offers an end in itself.”
I remember a favorite phrase of Kate Crawford’s Atlas or AI (MY WSJ Check here): “The possibilities of the tools become the horizon of truth”, a reminder, in this context, that even if we are flooded in the tools that allow the measurement and analysis of health data, we must guarantee our understanding of health the health limits of health limits.
Of course, the point is not going to the other side and rejecting the metrics completely.
As professor Jerry Muller, author of The Brilliant Book Tyranny of metrics, He explains: “I can’t see how competent experts could be the metrics. The question is their ability to evaluate the importance of metrics, and Recognize the role of non -measured. “(Aggregate emphasis).
I also talked about this need in a piece of 2011 entitled “What Silicon Valley does not apply to medicine”, writing “, a new technological platform that ignores the integrated needs of patients or underestimations or cubes to account for complexity and experts and patients with experience (and those closer to them) will be inevitably short.”
Advance
To more effectively meet the needs of patients, including the vitally important objective of preventing or avoiding the disease so that people do not become patients, it is essential to adopt the power and promise of emerging technologies, including those that allow the conceptualization of the “personal health os”, without confusing this map with the territory (as Alfred Korzybski, instructing).
It will be essential to establish priorities, in association with each patient, and identify a handful of key health parameters to focus on; Drs. David Blucenthal and J. Michael McGinnis discuss the theme of reflexive “central metrics” in this 2015 Jama “Point of view.”
At the same time, we must quickly maintain a vision of health and well -being that expands much beyond the confinement of a board and aspires to something beyond the recursive optimization of metric (as I discussed recently here). Our approach must be spacious enough to include authenticular value and significantly cultivate other components of a healthy and flourishing life, which may include intellectual captivation, the search or purpose, and the leases.
(Martin Seligman perma model: Emotion/positive joy, commitment/flow, relationships/connection with others, meaning/purpose and achievement – repeat a potentially useful framework [see here, here] To expand our thinking.)
In spite of the difficulty, if not the absolute impossibility, or the reduction of some of the most important and deep health components to an asylously digested number, we must continue to value them and pursue them.
Just as we diligently take advantage of emerging technology to build and refine health panels, we resolve to work towards a more expansive, lasting and significant health vision that exists beyond the stellar syntax of rows, columns and digits.
Dr. Shaywitz, a scientific doctor, is an operator and investor for a long time in health health, founder of Amazing Healthtech, professor in the Harvard Medicine Faculty and Deputy Member of the American Enterprise Institute. This piece was originally posted in the Carpenter report
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