Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [43]
“Who is the president?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied.
My friends chuckled. Everyone knew I was right back to normal.
There’s nothing like a brush with death to motivate you to make changes. My heart attack lit a fire under me to start taking my health much more seriously, which included my record keeping and self-monitoring. It was one of the factors that fueled my interest in starting up MyLifeBits. I’ve been keeping my own records since then.
HEALTH LIFELOGGING
Many machines in hospitals spew out paper, or even worse, no record at all, just ephemeral blips on a screen. A whole day of data collection may be summarized in the record as just “normal” or “elevated.” Even in nominally stable vital-sign data there can be patterns or brief events that could have relevance to treatment or diagnosis. Why aren’t more health-monitoring devices integrated into the information network, with their results saved?
The technology has not been there for us, but it soon will be. Abundant storage means we can afford a complete health lifelog. There is already a trend to collect and keep more data from existing medical equipment. Even more exciting, a whole host of new biosensors are coming on the scene that will expand our knowledge almost beyond imagination.
Biometric sensors are moving from the clinic to your home—or wherever you are. Diabetics measure their own blood-glucose at home from a pinprick of blood. Asthmatics breathe into palm-sized devices that measure their airflow. Finger clips can measure pulse, blood and tissue oxygen, blood sugar, the proportion of red blood cells (hematocrit), and tissue acidity (pH.)
People with sleep apnea can now be monitored, at home, in their own beds, with a variety of devices. Apnea, or brief cessation of breathing during sleep, leads to heart disease and other chronic problems. A clinical sleep apnea test involves spending the night in the clinic, covered in wires, constantly watched over by staff via cameras above the bed. In contrast, in-home methods are being developed that use finger (or toe) clips and sensing wristwatches, with microphones and infrared cameras tracking movement but protecting privacy by not recording actual sound or images.
If you belong to a gym, you’ve probably seen fitness equipment that tells you your heart rate and how many calories you’ve burned. Get ready for many more fitness sensors. Nike and Apple have partnered to develop sensors in the soles of shoes that transmit to your iPod. During your run, the iPod displays your pace, distance, time, and calories burned. After the run, the workout information can be uploaded to a workout e-memories Web site. Some gyms also have cardio equipment such as treadmills or stair steppers that can send data to the iPod to record workout data.
I bought a BodyBugg, which you wear on an arm strap against your bicep. It measures temperature, heat flux, galvanic skin response, and acceleration. Heat flux indicates how many calories I am burning. Galvanic skin resistance measures tiny fluctuations in my sweating; it’s one of the main physiological signals used in polygraph “lie detector” tests, and indicates psychophysiological parameters such as stress, anxiety, arousal, and surprise. From this data, I get a report that includes my calories burned due to activity, calories burned during rest, physical activity levels (in METs) and durations, sleep duration, and sleep efficiency.
I’m also intrigued by experimenting with smartphones that come equipped with accelerometers and GPS units. GPS and wireless signals from cell phone towers and Wi-Fi hubs can track my location and movement, which is a highly relevant component of health data. Location data can tell me how much “bonus” exercise I net in my daily comings