MyData use case: Health

How data intertwines with life on basic level

First you have the individual, John Smith, who lives; eats, exercises and sleeps. In order for John to organize his life and take better care of himself, he wants to track his activity level, his sleep habits and his finances. These are valuable data sets for him.

On the other hand, this data is interesting to many organizations as well. Did John Smith sleep well last week when the big deal was happening at work? What it tells about John Smith if his sleeping time dropped from 8 hours to 6 hours this month, is he stressed? Can we help him before he burnouts?

When there is a variation in John’s everyday rhythm, a sickness, the health care workers with access to the data could adjust the treatment to suit better for the customer. In fact, the best case is when John doesn’t need the care, when all John’s minor variations are triggers for a digital system to spot the risk of a sickness before it actually happens, so John can act on it.

How data helps those around you

And how about seniors, John’s mom? One benefiter of MyData are elderly people who are staying at home but receiving assistance weekly from nurses. If the nurses could have access to the data about what John’s mom buys from the local store, the nurses could help and support the mom in living healthier.

How data helps public health

In Finland, public health care is targeting risk groups of breast cancer for example. Open health data could make targeting risk groups, cancer, genetic diseases or depression, more efficient. With access to mobile phone data, grocery store data and location, health organizations could spot health problems in time. If there are no calls coming in or going out his phone, if his food is not healthy, and if he lives in particular neighborhoods where there is more depression than in the whole city average, the health care organization could take action before he actually becomes severely depressed. Usable, trusted and rich data could help to give the help for those in real need.

So in essence, preventive health care is supporting individuals. Also leveraging anonymized data from larger population sources benefits the whole society.