Brain Canvas

People make bad decisions about their health.  Some of us are quite lazy and do not exercise.  We ingest in excess.  American society in particular is so dysfunctional about reinforcing good health habits that many schools nutritionally poison students, as highlighted in this TED Talk by Jamie Oliver. The most striking features of our self-destructive behavior are that we either transgress in the face of our own cognitive dissonance, or we are ignorant of the very processes and materials which keep us alive and healthy.  Universal healthcare can meet a baseline of society’s needs, but it is still expensive because healthcare itself is expensive.  Even the government cannot get at the foundations of our obstacles to good daily health, like the school systems that focus on food affordability over balanced nutrition.  Stronger action must be taken. Individuals must take charge over their own health, but the health landscape is not simple.  Healthy food costs more, the poorest and unhealthiest communities often lack affordable access to nutritional food and health information, and intense pressure from social groups and media can keep people from making clear-headed decisions. Mobile communications devices, the falling cost of personalized medicine, and social networks can help people make smart health decisions with precision-targeted information.  Let’s combine a few key ingredients to deliver a revolutionary platform that looks as simple as a fortune cookie slip to 95% of users and stands on the best the past generation’s technical advancements.

• Wireless devices on reliable 4G networks (all-Internet Protocol) with varied input capability
• Standardized digital health records in the cloud, preferably with robust user-defined privacy
• Personal full genome sequencing available in a standardized format
• GPS and other location-based technology
• Social networks

When these systems work together, a person could avoid bad health decisions before they are made.  They could learn more about the choices they can make regarding food safety by simply scanning a food’s bar code with their mobile phone and displaying its nutritional information (and competing prices with other nearby similar items).  GPS location pinging could deliver highly relevant health warnings about disease outbreaks, heat waves, contaminated food sources, fresh food providers and air quality.  A running tab of one’s daily nutritional intake could be easily kept by scanning foods at home, or even food names at restaurants.  Have you got a peanut allergy, or do you avoid pork? Spectrographic chemical analysis with the same camera you use to post photos to Twitpic can show what you’re really eating. Emergency response and mitigation would be more effective.  By making part or all of your health records available to health institutions on the Internet, you could deliver an emergency text coupled with GPS location and your problem to emergency medical systems instead of, or before, explaining further in voice over the telephone – which could be a video call at the press of a button.  Armed with this information, help can reach you faster and with all the right equipment to save your life before you get to the hospital. The greatest aid in making good health decisions may be much simpler than all of that.  Every day, when you wake up and as you sit down to a meal and when you pass the swimming pool, a simple health fact or tip could appear on your mobile as a gentle reminder about the choices you can make to live a healthier life.  Your social networks can power this: relevant stories your friends share about their health or the decisions they make and their consequences can populate some of these messages.  Think of these as targeted health-related aphorisms: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” transformed into “This gym is offering a three-month promotional price for membership. Click here for more details about the offer.  Click here for details about the benefits of exercise.” Foresight and good design, by working with what we have, can transform the well-being of all people by empowering them to make smart choices.