I’m not sure how you’re supposed to start these type of things, so I’ll just get right to it. Today is my first day at Fitabase.
For the last five years I’ve been part of the small team over at Quantified Self Labs. It’s hard to put exactly into words how what it’s meant to me to be able to work on the interesting, and sometimes ambiguous issues around community building and support for the individuals and companies building out the landscape of personal data. During that time I had the privilege to learn and grow under the mentorship of Gary Wolf, a boss unlike any other. Our team worked together to help expose the vast world of personal data and how collecting, analyzing, and living with that data is having a profound impact on people all over the world. We hosted meetups, planned and executed conferences, wrote articles, and brought some of the brightest minds together to discuss the personal and public health impact of the Quantified Self. It was fun. It was enlightening.
While on leave from QS Labs to finish my dissertation I started to think about what might be next for me. I took a bit of time to explore, talk to good friends, and have some fun conversations with my wife. All of those have led me to today.
I will be leading Research and Development for Fitabase, a product of Small Steps Labs. Fitabase is a data management and analysis platform designed to help researchers use the most innovative measurement and intervention tools in their studies. It’s also led by my good friend, Aaron Coleman.
Aaron and I have a bit of a history. Back when I was a full-time graduate student and research assistant Aaron was hired to lead the development team for a research study examining the use of mobile and social technology for weight loss. Oddly enough, I was on his hiring committee. In the years that followed, I found myself gravitating to his office to chat about the latest Apple announcement or blog post on MobiHealthNews. We spent hours at the whiteboard designing mobile health apps and building features. It was great. Then he left. Bit by the entrepreneurship bug, he decided to make a go of it on his own. We kept in touch, passed ideas back and forth, and it wasn’t long before he started building a real business. Much like myself, Aaron saw the potential in using wearable devices to improve research. Unlike me though, he actually had the technical chops to go out and make it happen.
Four years later we’re joining forces again and I couldn’t be more excited.
One of the things I kept coming back to as I was thinking about where I wanted to spend my time was this tweet from Molly Sauter:
Tweet from @OddLetters (no longer online)
I believe in the power of data. I believe in the impact of research. I know that deep, personal, longitudinal data is changing the way we think about health and how we understand human behavior. I also know that researchers want to take advantage of innovative tools and methods to collect data with their participants. Fitabase does this. In fact, it’s been doing it for four years, helping power over 200 research studies and collecting and processing 2 billion minutes of data. I’m excited to work on building this infrastructure, the pipes that are supporting the flow of data that will help us move the needle towards building a culture of health.
Time to get to work.
Interested in using wearables devices in your research study, clinical trial, or healthcare project? I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch!