The Quantified Self and Ginger.io | The Economist

A global collaboration of self-trackers are changing the definition of self-improvement. One startup is developing the tools to notify us when we are sick before we know it ourselves

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Since their introduction, mobile phones have become smart, small, and ubiquitous. by 2012 they are no longer accessories but vital instruments always attached to their user and always on. The smartphone is a tracking device and a social monitor - registering where we go and how we interact with our friends and our family. Unlike ever before, humans today produce rich streams of unique data 24 hours a day.

Using this data is the goal of a movement called the quantified self, begun in America in 2008 by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly - two writers at Wired. It's practitioners, who number in the thousands, host meetups in cities around the world to share methods and advice on how they use their own data to improve their lives.

And a heap of new technologies, like ginger.io, have emerged in the process. The quantified self movement can boast practitioners who have lost weight, developed healthier relationships, scaled back addictions, and in one case won the most money in a single day on Jeopardy.

In each instance this was thanks to meticulous analysis of the data they produce.

At ginger.io, a start-up in Massachusetts, is a device that may soon tell us, and our caregivers, when we're getting sick based on data stream from the phone. It's an app for smartphones like the Android and it is currently being tested on patients and in health care systems.

Ginger.io uses two streams of data to monitor its users. The first is passive. the second is active a regular survey of the users well-being.

The team showed that the passive data recorded from the phone revealed downturns and well-being as soon as, or even before, the surveys did.

In 2011 ginger.io won a prize for its diabetes tracking prototype. This early warning alert could help patients with other chronic diseases such as crohn's, IBD or depression to seek help when it's most needed.

And the collected data set gives doctors a far more complete and objective picture of their patients overall health. But with such intimate data tracking some privacy concerns.

Ginger.io is only one of many startups that are taking these ideas into the commercial realm. Our data profiles are being written in real-time and companies will surely continue to use them to profitable ends. With the quantified self perhaps the user can too.

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