A Data-Rich Longitudinal Wellness Study for the Digital Age: Fixing a Broken Medical System Requires Data About Each...

We live in an age of plentiful information, collected continuously by pervasive gadgetry, distributed through digital and social networks, and mined deeply by ever-more-powerful analytics systems. And yet, one of the things we know the least about is our bodies. When it comes to our own health, we are driving blindly. Modern medicine has clearly been remarkably successful, as evidenced by continually growing life expectancies. For example, the number of people 65 and older in the United States has seen a steady increase over the last century, rising from 3.1 million in 1900 to 41.4 million as of 2011-and is expected to grow to 80 million by 2040. Concurrently, the number (and fraction) of people suffering from chronic conditions is also growing, from 44.7% in 1995 to 47.7% in 2015-and expected to rise to over 49% by 2030 [1]. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the vast majority of healthcare costs (86%) are spent on treating and managing chronic disease. Indeed, the medical field today focuses almost entirely on care after illness: modern medicine is largely reactive, waiting until the system fails before taking action. While the field of dentistry has fully embraced regular preventive evaluation and treatment with great success, most other medical fields have yet to do so. Yearly physical evaluations are recommended, but they rely on very limited data collection. As long as there are no symptoms, current standard medical practice largely foregoes testing (laboratory, imaging, etc.) as a screening method to detect disease before it manifests itself.