Day 1 at Doctors 2.0 and You conference. After my session with Dr. Carlo Caballero (@carvicab), I transferred rooms to catch Dr. Berci Mesko (@Berci), the medical futurist. I’d been following him for awhile on Twitter and was excited to meet Berci in person. I also wanted a picture with him as I had promised this to the rest of my #HealthXPh team mates who were also his fans.
Picture by @carvicab
I don’t intend to review the gadgets that Berci brought that day in this blog post. You can see some of these gadgets below.
Picture by @carvicab
Berci himself reviews these gadgets in this YouTube video.
Berci says he has around 40 wearables at home but wasn’t able to bring them all because of customs regulations.
Measuring sleep, stress, health, brain activity, focus… Is there something that @Berci isn’t able to measure? #doctors20 #ehealth
— Doctors 2.0 & You (@doctors20) June 4, 2015
Let me summarize my take-away points from Berci’s session.
- When asked, why he is measuring all these health parameters. Berci simply said, Because I can.
I use gadgets not bec I’m a geek but bec I want to live healthy and I need data for that – @berci#doctors20#quantifiedself — Iris Thiele Isip Tan (@endocrine_witch) June 4, 2015
- Berci said, I hate sleeping. Then he says, Good sleep is needed for health. To maintain his health, that is his motivation to measure sleep quality. He even showed this device that gently wakes him up when it registers movements signalling near wakefulness, so as not to waste any more time sleeping! Berci also mentioned that he can read a book before bedtime but avoids digital screens, which affects his sleep quality. Yes, that dreaded blue light effect. I’m so guilty!
- Although Berci has 40 or so wearables, he only wears 3 or 4 at a time. And only when he needs data. Some data you need not measure again because you already know. And when asked, what to do with patients who stop using a wearable, Berci said that’s ok if he’s already got the data needed. I do get that! I wore a Fitbit for a year then stopped. Precisely because after I had established a pattern, I could already predict when I can reach my 10,000 steps and when I can’t. Working in a low-resource country, I now wonder if I can lend my Fitbit to patients for short periods, to do as Berci said, get data!
- When you have that many wearables, keeping them all charged is a problem. Even for Berci!
- Lest everyone go and buy all kinds of wearables just because they can, Berci had this to say –
Focus on what you want to change. Ex sleep then get sleep monitor. Decide what you want to change before buying gadget. –@Berci #doctors20 — Iris Thiele Isip Tan (@endocrine_witch) June 4, 2015
Which makes perfect sense! Data is meaningless unless acted upon. That being said, I stood a long time at the See, Buy, Fly store at Schiphol airport looking at the Withings pop watch. It seemed more wearable than my Fitbit with the clip on. It certainly looked more fashionable and less geeky, more like a watch than a fitness wearable. But vain me, I knew I couldn’t wear two watches at a time either and the hubby had just given me a beautiful watch on my last birthday. So I focused and bought myself Chanel perfume instead, hahaha.
Because of jet lag, I was having a hard time sleeping the other day. I decided to give Lumosity, which Berci also recommended, a try. Here’s an initial evaluation –
So there, I need more sleep!