The digital evolution of health care at Big Data in Precision Health - Scope

Often, the phrase "digital health" conjures images of smart watches or apps that process your health data to give a readout of a parameter like heart rate. That is part of digital health, to be sure, but at the Big Data in Precision Health conference last week, four speakers during the last session of the conference offered a much more expansive vision for digital health technologies. They discussed robotics, precision mental health and personal behaviors in health practices -- the ever-elusive key to actually making changes in your own health. "Despite the mass amounts of data that we have today, we've still yet to understand how to change [health] behavior," said Jennifer Schneider, MD, the chief medical officer at Livongo, a company that develops products tailored to individuals with chronic diseases, such as devices that monitor blood sugar and provide personalized reminders to people with diabetes. But in areas such as mental health, it's not always easy to know what actions to take, even if you are motivated.