Big Data for Better Health

Dacadoo can give anyone a health score by taking their weight, height gender and age and wrapping it around data from their social life and mobility, says Peter Ohnemus. Healthcare is about prevention and prevention can be achieved by making it visible and relevant. Apps on smartphones combined with biosensors will provide the big data in a digital world that is about to revolutionise healthcare.

Transcription of the interview with Peter Ohnemus

BIG DATA FOR BETTER HEALTH

Da Vinci said a human being is consisting of who you are, how you feel and how you live. We took those three pillars and integrated that into a score. By using your weight, your age, your gender and your height, we can give you a pretty good health score, a simple number, something people understand. A number from 1 to 1000. I was concerned about people today not moving so much any more, so the health score platform from dacadoo is based on that you have a health score and then we use something you call solomo so that ‘social, local and mobile’ and then we integrate that with gamification.

SOCIAL LIFE AND MOBILITY 

It’s known in the Academia, that if you put 500 people on a diet, and they have to share what they eat and what activities they do, and you if have 500 who are not networked, those 500 networked will actually lose five kilos three times faster than the people that are not networked. So, you know, human mankind are networked individuals, we are social individuals, so I thought it should be fun to be healthy…

PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE

So I believe prevention, if you can motivate people, and this is proven academically, if you can motivate people around… from 20 to 30 to get on a good track, they will come fine through life. The damage, as we know, first happens 10-15 years later, so I believe prevention is about making it visible to people, making it relevant to people and then giving them a fun motivating experience.

SMARTPHONE APP

Over the last 10 years, we have seen smartphones become a very important part of people’s life. I think the prevention will have to take place through the smartphone because it’s with us 24 hours, 7 days a week, and then you have biosensors, and biosensors can be pedometers that count your steps, you have patches now to take your blood pressure, that cost 25 dollars or less…

HEALTHCARE REVOLUTION

Basically you would have hundreds of different biosensors, those have to be seamless integrated, so basically they run over bluetooth, just like your smartphone in your car. And then, all that data comes together, and then we have wrapped the health score around that in order to give you something meaningful that you can use with your family, with your friends, with your employer… And, of course, all the data needs to be highly secured, not used for any marketing issues. But at the end of the day, I think digital will change healthcare in a way nobody can imagine.