LIVINGLIVING
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Foodie snaps
Talk of scales takes us directly on to
food. Google Tech has something under
development whereby you can take a
photo of your food and upload it, and
be shown what calories are in it. In an
article written by Zak Stemer and posted
online in May 2015, he reported that while
working on Google's image recognition
programs - algorithms that can analyze
a photo and precisely identify items -
Google research scientist Kevin Murphy
thought of a unique application: Counting
calories by analyzing photographs of
food. Murphy explained that food photos
are the most common type of photos on
the web after pictures of actual people.
With this developing software, a Google
computer can look at an image of,
say, eggs, pancakes and bacon, and
identify each food. But Murphy's vision
goes one step further as he wants to
create an app that looks at the photo,
identifies the foods, analyzes the size of
the food portions, matches the nutritional
information for each food, and then spits
back the caloric intake of your meal. As
Stemer wrote, that would mean "No more
clunky food diaries, no more guessing
serving sizes. Snap a pic of your dinner
(some of us already do it for Instagram),
give it to Google and learn the caloric
count of what you're putting into your
body. And while Murphy confirms that
this project is in the works, he knows it
faces several obstacles before it's ready
for consumer use. Given the potential
demand for this product - more than
78.6 million Americans currently battle
obesity - and Google's resources, it
shouldn't be long untill counting calories
is, literally, a snap."
Thank you for sharing
It's also now possible for you to
contribute to research through your
phone. Increasingly apps are looking to
facilitate how you upload your data either
to a general site, which can compile
information for a particular medical
condition, or so you can send it to your
healthcare professional. You can upload
your data to places like Patients Like Me
and share it with the wider community.
This data from the wider community can
be vital to researchers.
Patients Like Me hosts shared data and
with services like this you can collaborate
with researchers to help move forward
knowledge about your condition. As their
site states, "Learn from others: compare
treatments, symptoms and experiences
with people like you and take control of
your health. Connect with people like
you: share your experience, give and get
support to improve your life and the lives of
others. Track your health: chart your health
over time and contribute to research that
can advance medicine for all."
Similarly Ginger IO uses smart
phones to track your health, particularly
mental health, and predict things. They
say, "The potential for big data in health
is endless. We built our company to
empower researchers, physicians and
healthcare providers to improve patient
care. Our company is based on cuttingedge predictive
models developed by
MIT scientists and engineers. Our datadriven approach
helps unlock patterns in
the massive amounts of health data we all
generate today."
Now you can begin to see where Big
Data comes from. It's everyone's data,
not just the miles of data you personally
generate. But smaller groups matter
too. Sub-groups of quantified selves can
make things happen though a shared
interest. Within the diabetes community
are CGM sensor wearers. Within that
group are Dexcom sensor wearers. Within
that group and within Twitter social media
#wearenotwaiting was a movement
started by people using Dexcom CGM
who were unhappy that they could not
see their data on their watches, so they
did it themselves.
A great example of the power of
data contributed my multiple users with
a medical condition involved a spate of
asthma attacks in Barcelona in the 1980s
which was eventually tracked down to
ships transporting soya beans. Soya
bean dust had blown across the city
only at those points in time when those
ships were in town. What it lead to was
smarter management for asthma and
other breathing conditions like COPD. The