The Nurse in Your Pocket
05/05/2012
From The Nurse in Your Pocket:
In 2009, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave a dorm full of students smartphones and tracked where they went, who they called and texted, and at what times they communicated. The researchers found that the data pouring out of the phones could reliably tell when a student was ill: Those stricken with the flu moved around much less, and those who were depressed had fewer calls and interactions with others.
As a result of the study, some students who worked on it founded Ginger.io, a behavioral analytics firm that turns mobile data into health insights. Based on branches of computer science known as “machine learning” and “big data,” they sort through tens of thousands of data points coming out of a smartphone each month to identify a user’s typical pattern of behavior. And when someone deviates from that pattern, Ginger.io can alert friends or doctors that they may need to intervene.
It’s kind of like a “check engine light” for the body, and it extends the thinking of Intel’s Eric Dishman that’s described in the video below.
What do you think your phone would say about you? (comment below)
