The Digital Health Update by Paul Sonnier ⋅ Sep 15, 2016 ⋅ #239

I will be making this announcement to 50,000+ members of the Digital Health LinkedIn group. If you’re on LinkedIn, please do join the group, which allows you to opt in to receiving these announcements in addition to connecting with thousands of other global stakeholders in digital health. Note that I will continue to update this announcement up until sending out the final version via LinkedIn.

The Digital Health Update by Paul Sonnier ⋅ Sep 15, 2016 ⋅ #239

Dear Group,

The group hit a milestone this week when it surpassed 50,000 global members. When I founded the group in August of 2009 I named it ‘Wireless Health San Diego’. Then, as I people from around the world began joining the group—and I saw that no other groups were doing what I was doing in terms of aggressive curation (keeping SPAM out, and value in), working to catalyze innovation and adoption via sharing relevant news (a mere trickle at that time), plus adding my own insights—I changed the name to ‘Wireless Health’. But as I saw the myriad of health technology terms being used I felt that there was something missing: a common denominator. It wasn’t until Dr. Eric Topol’s book, “The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care” came out in Dec, 2011 (digital version) that the light bulb went off for me: DIGITAL is the common denominator. Yet, practically nobody was using the term ‘digital health’ and literally nobody was including genetics and genomics in it. So, I decided to rename the group to ‘Digital Health’ (again, the term was hardly used, so that name was actually available!), and then I defined what digital health is, adding the critical element of genomics (genetics at that time). Based on my experience leading and facilitating cross-functional product and systems development teams in the commercial aerospace, medical devices, and mobile device industries, I know that clear communication is critical to making progress in interdisciplinary efforts. As such, my mission has been to promulgate the term and definition of digital health globally and foster its use as the best and most precise term to describe the convergence of the digital and genomic revolutions with health, healthcare, living, and society. If you look around, it seems that this has turned out pretty well!

In light of the above, it’s appropriate that my latest digital health quote posted on the Story of Digital Health Instagram account is from J. Craig Venter, one of the first to sequence the human genome (his own), and point out that our genetic code is, in fact, a digital code.

As I featured in last week’s announcement, the new Apple Watch 2 has a host of new digital health benefits. But the other big product announcement by Apple, their so-called ‘AirPods‘, may prove to be game-changing for the future of digital health. As it turns out, the AirPods are not your average wireless in-ear speakers, but actually wearable computers that rest in your ears. There’s the speaker, of course, but also an embedded microphone, a ‘W1’ processor, and multiple sensors, including an accelerometer. Of most relevance are the infrared sensors, which are marketed right now simply for detecting when the pods are in your ear (to coordinate audio playback and other features). But, potentially, these could be used to measure pulse and temperature, perhaps even blood oxygen saturation. Regulations obviously apply here and I am speculating on what is possible, but please do share your thoughts in the group discussion.

Another neat feature is the integration with Siri. By tapping the AirPods twice you can summon the artificial intelligence (AI) voice assistant and connect to the Internet in a new form of user interface that effectively creates an auditory augmented reality. No word yet on how or if Pokemon Go may leverage this feature for gaming, but one can imagine sports and fitness applications that seamlessly integrate with the infrared sensor and accelerometer capabilities.

Speaking of auditory augmented reality, the user experience for that will be greatly improved—at least for Android, Chrome, and other non-Apple users, I imagine—when Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence unit brings to market a newly-developed ‘WaveNet’ system, that can talk 50% more human-like (not an actual technical term!) than typical ‘text-to-speech’ systems.

Apple AirPods product video…

Also of interest is this hilarious, unofficial take on Apple’s new ‘innovation’ of removing the headphone jack. Note that this is NSFW (not safe for work) “The New iPhone is Just Worse”

And last but not least, here’s a conversation between a doctor and a patient that’s emblematic of the inherent tension between doctors/the medical establishment and online digital health information empowering consumers and patients. Hat tip to Dr. Eric Topol

 

Follow me on Twitter @Paul_Sonnier for all the news I share each day.

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Paul Sonnier
Social Entrepreneur ⋅ Ecosystem Strategist ⋅ Keynote Speaker
Founder, Digital Health group on LinkedIn ⋅ 50,000+ members
Creator, Story of Digital Health
Instagram @StoryofDigitalHealth
Twitter @Paul_Sonnier
San Diego, CA, USA

 

 

 

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