WELL

well

Most health apps leave a lot to be desired. We know this from our own experiences trying to log in meals for more than a few days in a row, as well as from a 2014 study highlighting that half of activity tracker owners stop using their devices, and one-third stop after only six months. To address the gap between data collection and actionable insight delivered back to users, I led a multi-disciplinary team to create well, a crowdsourced health platform connecting researchers and volunteers.

We developed well as a prototype iPhone application leveraging HealthKit and Amazon Web Services for secure data entry and storage. I also created a new data visualization approach called Contextualized Quantified Self that presents the user's data in the context of their activities, environment, and other users.

well was accepted into Columbia University's Innovation and Entrepreneurship program in 2015, where our team worked to develop the app and a business plan. While we ultimately didn't pursue starting the venture, we regularly met with Columbia Business School faculty and had the opportunity to practice presenting to angel investors. well also won 2nd place at the American Medical Informatics Association Student Design Challenge for facilitating human-data interaction.

For a deeper dive check out a video introducing the app and our paper on Contextualized Quantified Self. The iterative evolution of the app is included below.

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Team: Tal Lorberbaum, Alexandre Yahi, Tiffany Callahan, Joyce Yoo, Nicholas Tatonetti. I conceived of the idea for well with Nick and Alex; led prototyping of the Marvel and Invision iterations with Joyce and Alex; conceived and designed the Contextualized Quantified Self visualization; and implemented the app in Swift with Alex. I worked with Alex and Tiffany to further develop Contextualized Quantified Self for the AMIA Student Design Challenge.