"Beyond Quantified Self: How Quantifying Everything Is Not Enough To Improve Societal Wellbeing" - Carlos Rodarte (Founder, Volar Health)

Editor's Notes

1. I often talk about technology and data, but I’ve come to realize that these things are not the problem. The technology and data we have today is already sufficient to impact our lives. The problem, in fact is our attitudes. Luckily for all of us, attitudes can be changed.
2. Attitude problems exist widely when trying to change things that seem too big, or beyond ourselves. Climate change for example. Attitude can be compounded by apathy, as in the case of politics. And in health, this mindset that something can be put off. The issue is it takes too long to see individual impact.
3. Back in 2008, researchers in NYC looked at the impact of displaying the calories of various menu items at 4 fast food chains, including MacDonalds. Does anyone care to guess whether more calories were consumed before labeling, or after labeling? More recently, a 5 year assessment was conducted and showed basically no change in calorie consumption, despite additional efforts like adding that daily values should be 2,000 calories. Simply being shown data does not move the needle.
4. Wearables are becoming more technologically sophisticated, capturing tons of data about each individual, however time and again we see engagement levels drop over time, in some cases rather quickly. From my direct experience, it takes me about a week or two to learn “my sweet spot”, at which point a device seems like much more of a nuisance. The value received outweighs the burden that has to be managed.
5. Recently, food4me conducted a large nutrition study, large in Europe. One of the findings includes that purely genetically disclosing genetic information (in this case around nutritional markers) does not lead to better outcomes than highly personalizing meals. A new language to think about food experiences can help change a mindset, and small aspects of how we consume. I recently went to Japan, in the mountain of Mt Koya, and was fascinated by how big the experience of eating felt like, but when really analyzed, it’s not a whole lot of food.
6. Many of the tools quantify the individual – walking habits, exercise, calories, however we know that other factors impact overall wellness. Environmental flows … using sensors to understand how a city’s population moves about and physical “stress points” occur, ensuring green spaces exist, mapping out strategically where restaurants are versus farmer’s markets for example. By accounting for culture and value systems at the individual level, in the context of one’s intimate data, and a quantified environment, we can begin to alter our environment to make wellness more easily (and not requiring active engagement).
7. Too many of us, the majority of us one may argue, live in large cities.