The Seattle-based design company Artefact has developed a concept app called Chronicle, aimed at exploring what personal healthcare might be like a few years down the road. This seems to me an excellent way of stimulating discussion. The usual hand-waving about big data and sensors and IoT is okay for getting the initial ideas across, but it's time technologists and business leaders started generating some deeper insights. What would data-driven personal healthcare really mean to our lives – moment by moment? And what would be the implications for providers, insurers, policy makers, and citizens?
One benefit of prototyping in this area is that it's pretty easy to run up an app and some dummy data data streams for it to work with. This enables developers to test use cases while pointing toward requirements for data standardization, ownership, security, and so on.
I have a feeling we're some way off significant, generalized benefits from personalized healthcare. I'm not sure the features sensors can monitor are necessarily those with the greatest relevance to health maintenance. Of course, there will be new types of sensors. Perhaps data need will spark technological innovation. In any case, the work needs to move on from “wouldn't it be great if...” and this app is a step in the right direction. Code Design
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