Big Tech Is Going After Health Care
Good.<p>I spent a few years working in a medical IoT startup, and the current state of the &quot;mainstream&quot; medical monitoring technology is not inspiring.<p>During a brainstorming meeting, I asked one of our cofounders, a physician, to tell me about some of the problems he had seen in health.  Don&#x27;t try and solve it, just lets talk about problems.<p>He said that <i>by far</i> one of the most common causes for re-hospitalization is congestive heart failure.  It&#x27;s a super common problem, <i>and</i> it&#x27;s actually really easy to catch (it has strong indicators).  When your heart begins to fail, depending on what side of it fails, your body will retain fluid (in the form of blood) in either your heart or your organs.  Regardless, you will bloat up, and gain weight quickly.<p>So if a patient is at risk for CHF, a nurse will monitor their weight every day (or multiple times a day) and watch for spikes.  If their weight spikes, a doctor will intervene in whatever way is necessary.<p>Can you imagine my frustration at hearing this?  It&#x27;s this massive problem with an obvious (CHEAP!! SO FUCKING CHEAP!!) solution.<p>I spend $30 on a scale from amazon immediately, and about an hour after it arrived I had it connected to an android tablet and broadcasting its readings to a webservice.<p>We never went to market with that (long story).  Please, if you have the means to take something like that and scale it, do so.  You could save lives.  I&#x27;m currently trying.  More people should be trying.  This stuff is so easy, and the impact that you could have is massive.<p>Also: please call your grandparents and just talk to them.  Ask them how they are feeling.  Social isolation (full disclosure: this is what my current project is trying to solve) is probably the area where we as software people could have the biggest impact.