Everything

Technology that will sync my body’s physiology with a smart fridge and a mobile app.

Consider creating a fridge that knows its contents and is also connected through an app to your smartphone. Using the deep learning neural networks for Food ID Recognition, one could develop a fridge that recognizes what its contents are. Furthermore, using the barcode technology that supermarkets use to catalogue inventory, the smart fridge could do the same. Using AmazonGo technology, it will register every time you remove an item from the fridge and if you put it back in. Now consider that the fridge is connected to your smartphone via an app, whereby your fridge can send you alerts when items are about to expire and when you are low on certain foods that you have set notifications for in preferences. This system is convenient because one could check their “fridge inventory” whilst out in case one decides to do last-minute spontaneous food-shopping. This enables the user to act in a more informed way – the fridge telling the user that his meat is about to expire may stimulate the user to eat meat for dinner that night.

Now, consider that the app is also connected to a device that monitors your body’s physiology - eg a bracelet or a device that analyzes your breath (eg. Lumen tracks your metabolism). If key physiology metrics (metabolism, blood sugar levels, energy levels etc.) can be consistently monitored, analyzed and synchronized with your shopping list and fridge inventory, this could be a great multi-faceted technology to support better health and making healthier eating decisions - especially if the app for example also shows where you can buy the healthy food products it suggests (partnerships with large + small food markets) and identifies and shares ‘best-buy’ shopping markets for those products.

Personalized healthcare that gives control and autonomy back to the end user. In both mental health and physical health, we are seeing apps and technology develop that are delivering personalized insights directly to consumers that then helps them to make choices and take action steps for themselves in devising their own healthcare plans with informed and strategic guidance. Think first of consumer products that closely track physiological systems in the body, seamlessly, and deliver quick insights through mobile apps on how the user can change their behavior/habits to improve their health. This trend started with products like the fitbit and apple watch but I think we’re going to see big leaps in technology that is even more attuned to the body and that will generate more specific and tailored insights. For example, Lumen, the world's first hand-held, portable device to measure and track your metabolism that tells you if your body is using fats or carbs for fuel in a single breath and then instructs you on your eating, sleeping, exercise and more in order to optimize and capitalize on your metabolism.

Now consider the technology and personal applications used to track physiological symptoms related to mental states. The first application, in my opinion, that popularized “mental health” via technology, was the meditation app, Headspace. This and most of the apps that followed were not providing any services tailored to an individual's needs or providing any personalized insights and generally focused on a single aspect of mental health, such as sleep quality. I was quite skeptical about the efficacy of apps like these in replacing or complementing mental health treatment until two years ago when I discovered Happify, an app that enables you to pick particular programs based on the particular mental health issues you are struggling with. These programs give the user the option to complete activities both in-app and in real life and also accommodate people with different interests + learning preferences - e.g. short videos vs short readings vs gamified learning. Today, there are technologies such as Sentio’s Feel mood bracelet, which navigates your treatment by monitoring your mood throughout the day, alerting you to important changes based on your physiology and then suggests activities based on those changes to improve your mood/mental state.

I think we are now moving in a direction where both mental and physical health could be significantly improved using AI and tech by allowing the user to take control of their health on a day-to-day basis. Technology that improves the awareness of the individual and provides constant and easy access to information about their body and mind states in the present moment, will likely diminish many healthcare problems that build up over time unnoticed. I think this is a very interesting trend because developed correctly, these technologies could significantly improve peoples’ quality of life and reduce long-term health costs.

The education industry. I think that down the line we will see a disruption in the education space as e-learning develops to become more intelligent, adaptive and integrating more real-world experience. Currently there is a lot of hype around e-learning, for eg the PowerMBA is reportedly doing extremely well. A recent Forbes article I read on the PowerMBA made an interesting point about the shift to e-learning being consistent with disruptions occurring in other economic sectors - “In entertainment, for example, where streaming is taking movie theaters and even traditional movie studios out of the equation. In mobility and hospitality, where the sharing economy is challenging taxi companies and hotel chains. In publishing, where social media is shuttering legacy periodicals.”

However, in order for there to be a real disruption in the education space and movement to e-learning, I believe more time is necessary for the technology, curriculums and general approach to e-learning to be optimized for an experience that matches or exceeds that of the classroom and engaging with professors and classmates. The disruption won’t just be moving the classroom experience online, it’ll have to be changing the entire learning experience. Innovators will have to start from the problem education is meant to solve rather than building off the solution that educational institutions provide. I think there is a lot of opportunity here for innovation and designing what the future of education could look like and will definitely be an interesting space to watch in the coming years and/or get involved in from now.

One in particular I am excited about is the ability to see subtitles as people communicate in different languages with one another. Google is currently working on a wearable (glasses) whose focus is subtitles for the hard of hearing, as they are trying a new angle for their google glass that previously did not gain enough traction in the market. I think that the ability to communicate with individuals in their respective mother-tongues will not only help people doing business with one another, but also socially and politically. If visual tech can bring inter-linguistic understanding to such a level so as to radically reduce misunderstanding and remove the necessity for human translators who may be subject to human error or bias, there may be many stronger and important relationships that could evolve. Think of all the people in the world whose first language is not the same as yours, who you can barely converse with and now think how many of them could potentially be just like you - your soulmate even - and you could have a short conversation with them and never know simply because of the language barrier.

I also think that developments in AR are extremely exciting, particularly when imagining the possibilities of linking the brain and neural systems to AR to project peoples’ imaginations and fantasies onto the world. One interesting use case might be creating an AR with your mind’s eye to practice doing an interview or a performance - which we already often do in our heads - so imagine making that more real and how that could improve human interaction and overcome performance anxiety. Another interesting use case is for a child to be able to project their fears visually for their parent/guardian to see as a new mode of communication to bridge understanding. This might also be useful in politics as often visual representations of a situation (e.g. movies) can be much more powerful in communicating not just a story but the emotions around a story and help make that human connection.