InsideTracker: the Quantified Self of Your Inner Space

Posted by cbonner on July 23, 2012 @ 6:43 am

No Comments

Buffer

This is Part II of a special TopCoder Blog deep dive into the Quantified Self movement. Don’t know the Quantified Self? – Watch the video and understand the impact. Subscribe to the TopCoder Innovation Series on YouTube today.

It seems almost a daily ritual lately that as you peruse the health 2.0 blogs you will come across an interesting article or two focused on the Quantified Self, and specifically new sensor technologies aimed at feeding back incredible layers of data to the individual sporting the device. And as compelling and promising as sensor technology surely is, there is a source of data within each of us that already exists and is now being tapped like never before to manifest incredibly specific regimens to best regulate our own body. The source of data we are referring to is of course, our blood.

InsideTracker is a consumer facing offering, brought to us by Segterra, Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts start-up who would like nothing more than to give the human race a far greater understanding of how our daily decisions affect our own, individual, inner space. Combining in-depth blood analysis with data visualizations, incredibly personalized wellness recommendations, and gamification, InsideTracker has created a powerful offering for those who really want to understand what is best for their individual body. How specific do their recommendations get? Very. For example, their nutritional nudges don’t just point out a deficiency, but they give you multiple and specific food recommendations that will properly balance the deficiency without throwing off other essential bio-markers.

On Point Read: The 5 Pillars of the Quantified Self

TopCoder was fortunate enough to secure time with the founder and CSO of Segterra, Inc. Gil Blander. Gil has a big vision for where the Quantified Self can take humanity and he’s positioning the InsideTracker service as an important piece of the overall solution that helps bring us humans to a life of better living through better understanding. Enjoy the video below from the TopCoder Innovation Series and check out InsideTracker’s unique offering and platform for individual wellness at their website. Below the video, we discuss a few coming technological advances that can make a platform such as InsideTracker that much more mainstream, and therefore, that much more impactful to the masses.

Here are a few coming advances to offerings such as InsideTracker that will make a service like this, that much more compelling and user friendly.

First, taking and analyzing blood will become far easier for the individual to accomplish. Complex laboratory analysis machines will of course “shrink” and analysis kits first meant for the home, will eventually make their way into personal devices. Potentially, the analysis of our blood might be obtained from non-invasive measures. Regardless, the path is quite clear. As the years pass, many more individuals will have near-instant access to their blood analysis via cheaper and more personal methods. A service offering such as InsideTracker will clearly benefit from the removal of what is a time crunching and monetarily ostracizing hurdle.

The nutritional nudges mentioned earlier in this post will ultimately be part of additional service offerings. We are not suggesting InsideTracker will offer this (perhaps this is their path), but someone who is tying to the data InsideTracker is generating most certainly will. This just makes great sense. If my individual bloodwork is alerting me of a particular deficiency and showcases the top foods I can intake to rectify my internal imbalance, a clear next step in this service-dominated era, is the delivery of the actual foods to optimally balance my performance. It will also be interesting to watch how geo-local advancements from sites and apps such as Yelp will make the most out of this personalized data and walk-us, quite literally, through the door to a meal optimized for our own bodies.

We’d like to again thank Gil Blander of InsideTracker (Segterra, Inc.) for his time and for all of the illuminating and detailed explanations he has provided us. If interested in better understanding your personal path to an optimized you, visit InsideTracker and research if their service is right for you.