Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [44]
People with congestive heart failure need to track their weight gain, which may signal an increase of fluid retention due to poor circulation. They are prescribed diuretics to shed the fluid. But if their weight gain is due to increased muscle mass, from working out at the gym as the doctor ordered, diuretics are the last thing they need. Thus, scales have been developed with a handle that passes an imperceptibly mild electric current from hand to foot. Changes in electric conductivity indicate the nature of the weight gain—fluid or muscle—so patients can discern whether their weight gain is harmful or beneficial.
Another way to get health data from me is to build sensors into my clothing. Researchers at Dublin City University, Ireland, are working on fabrics that can be made into shirts that track your breathing, or in your shoes to track your steps. They also have a treated fabric that, together with a small LED light and sensor, can be used to detect the PH level of your sweat—an indicator of dehydration. Their fabrics may also be used to detect your posture (another way to track posture is with cameras, such as Alexandro Jaimes and Jianyi Liu used to warn the user in front of a PC when an unhealthy posture has been held for too long).
In the future, the most amazing sensors will be implanted inside your body. Those of us with chronic ailments like diabetes or heart conditions are likely to have implanted sensors that wirelessly transmit their knowledge to another device outside the body, such as a cell phone or personal digital assistant. These sensors will not only stream our vital-sign readings to our personal health record but will continuously monitor them for troublesome or telltale patterns. Depending on the severity or risk, they will e-mail us alerts to follow up with our doctors as soon as possible, or immediately connect us to our doctor’s office, or even autodial 911 and send for an ambulance. Cardiac devices such as my pacemaker are already being equipped for wireless communication. They pass on values undetectable outside the body, including electrical activity, intraventricular pressures, blood flow, and ejection fractions.
All of your biosensors will communicate to have their data become part of your lifelog. Manufactures like Philips already sell a line of such devices for the home that wirelessly transmit to a hub that then can forward information to a health provider. I recently bought a Bluetooth-enabled bathroom scale that automatically sends my weight to my e-memory (in this case, HealthVault) where I can chart my weight-loss progress, or lack thereof, over time.
In addition to sensors, the reduced cost and increased convenience of some lab work will expand our health lifelog. For example, comprehensive blood sampling is becoming cheap and possible to do without large volumes of blood, enabling biomarker testing that can help identify the onset of many conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular risk, and autoimmune diseases.
In November 2008 I accepted an invitation, as a Microsoft employee, to participate in a landmark digital health research study called the Scripps Genomic Health Initiative. They asked me to send a DNA sample—via spit in a bottle—to San Diego for gene sequencing. The study is aimed at understanding if people will be motivated to make positive lifestyle changes such as exercising, eating healthy, and quitting smoking after receiving their personal genomics test report.
I believe more testing will become routine, and we will log all the details of each test, not just their summary results.
You don’t have to be a multiple heart-attack victim to see how much life quality, and even years of extra life, will be salvaged by recording how well your body is functioning. Then again, even multiple heart attacks can’t get me over my loathing for dealing with batteries. The hassle factor of changing batteries all the time is just too much. Here’s a word to the wise for all the