Self-Tracking Wins at the Mayo Clinic

Alexandra Carmichael

The Mayo Clinic held their Transforming Healthcare Symposium last week in Rochester, MN. On display were the latest innovations they are brewing up in their SPARC Innovation Lab, like real-time, on-screen specialist consultation when you go to visit your primary care doctor. A stellar lineup of speakers from Intel's Craig Barrett to IDEO's Tim Brown and SPARC's passionate Maggie Breslin talked about patient empowerment, change by design, and healthcare as a conversation.

There was also a competition for ideas that would change the future of healthcare. I entered this competition using self-tracking as a topic, and was one of 3 winners! Here is the 5-minute talk I got to give to 500 healthcare change agents at the Mayo Clinic, and the written summary that won the competition.

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"The New Wave of Self-Tracking
Ubiquitous, invisible biosensors. Constant, streaming measurements. Analytics for your health.

Detailed self-tracking will transform our understanding of our bodies, our health, and our medicine. Geeks are already tracking everything from calories to blood pressure to steps taken during the day (Quantified Self). People with chronic conditions track their treatments, pain levels, and side effects (CureTogether).

Click here to watch this talk

The ultimate promise when this goes mainstream is true personalized medicine, where each person gets a treatment plan individual to their body. It's an exciting future, and the seeds are being planted now."