The Case for Tech in Public Health Advocacy: LEARN, SHARE & ENGAGE

Everyone knows exercise is good for them. Reminding someone of this fact seems a wasted breath. However, teaching them new dimensions of this activity may turn a droll topic into an interesting one.

Inspiration can strike at inconvenient moments.

How often have you had an idea at an inconvenient moment that you wanted to act upon and did not wish to forget it. This occurs to me regularly while listening to a podcast and cruising along a back country road on my nordic cross skates.

My inspiration for writing this letter occurred three days ago under those exact circumstances. A lifelong exercise advocate and practioner, I was listening to a podcast about a new business startup in India called Yotta Data Services. It has launched a cloud-based AI service on a massive processing platform.

The business model of Yotta,  as described by CEO Sunil Gupta, was so intriguing that I felt an urge to explore its capabilities to expand and “supercharging” the mission of a Canadian organization to help concerned Canadians learn how to better manage their personal health.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has enormous potential for missions like this. The AI train has already “left the station” and think it wise to glab a wrung on the caboose to travel its rails as soon as possible to gain a leg up on the competition. “The early bird catches the worm”, or so I’m told.

One of Many productivity aids.

While AI promises enormous future gains in human productivity and prosperity, there are other tech tools I use today to enrich and inform my personal health and fitness journey:

• The Apple Watch. I have monitored and logged my maximum HR, average HR, distance traveled, average pace and elapsed time for every nordic cross skating outing that I have completed for the past 13 years. I strive to sustain the physical performance of my aging body (73 in August) for as long as possible. In the past, I used Polar and Garmin watches for the same purpose. I can’t understate how important this practice has been to keep my health and fitness in focus as a priority in my life.

• Podcasts. I listen to over a dozen podcast shows that concern my favourite subjects: Economics, Human Consciousness and metaphysics, Artificial Intelligence applications, Health & Fitness Sciences, Political Philosophy & contemporary politics. Also, who can ignore the popular, impossible-to-ignore topics such as the science and policy of the Covid pandemic and the Climate Change Crisis Theory. The Drive with Dr. Peter Attia is one of my favourite podcast shows. I spend an average of twenty hours per week as a podcast student. Rarely do I cycle, x-c ski or nordic cross skate without listening to a podcast with ear buds and the Podcast app on my Apple iPhone 15. Every drive in my car, lawn-cutting and snow removal effort, and a range of household chores offers a new podcast learning opportunity. This may sound excessive, but engaging ideas and the informed opinions of experts are among the most fulfilling pastimes I can imagine these days. Learning by listening to podcasts, books on Audible and online articles using the steadily improving text-reading apps is truly one of the greatest gifts of the digital era.

• Safe Headphones - My wife bought the Shoks OpenRun Pro premium bone-conduction, open ear sports headphones for my birthday. Cynthia rides her bicycle to accompany me while I nordic cross skate on our local country roads. She witnesses the traffic in my proximity and frequently expressed her concern that I was unable to hear approaching traffic while listening to a podcast with earbuds. My Shoks headset has eliminated this concern and become a valued part of my exercise kit which I use in a variety of situations conveniently and safely.

• Morpheus and HRV.  Scientists in Russian were first to investigate and apply HRV (heart rate variability) to measure stress recovery in athletic training over forty years ago. Advances over the past decade makes HRV broadly applicable for general health/fitness enhancement. HRV, a metric captured from a electrocardiogram chest strap, offers personalized insights into recovery from stressor related to exercise/training, illness, emotional crises, and other life circumstances. Morpheus monitors the autonomic nervous system to reveal how the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems combine to help the body to adapt to these sources of stress. I think of it a personal, AI, digital coach that provides useful advice for my physical activity plans. For a great overview of HRV, Peter Attia’s discussion with the Morpheus founder is excellent.

• Sleep Trackers. Several years ago, I read Why We Sleep by Dr. Matthew Walker. Since then, I paid more attention to the importance of a good night's sleep to my overall health. Tech products from Oura, Whoop, Fitbit, Apple and Garmin all offer sleep monitoring and reporting features which is a testament to a growing interest in sleep. My wife has used Oura for two years and found its value in improving her sleep routines. I have not yet invested in a sleep tracker, but know that my next Apple watch upgrade will provide one (edition 10 is expected to be a major upgrade from the edition 7 I wear today.)

• Large language models (LLMs). This wing of the AI revolution is still in its infancy. Impressive upgrades to OpenAI’s ChartGPT platform have captured the public’s imagination in recent times. Within a few years, many domain-specific LLMs will appear that specialize in virtially every imaginable topic of human interest. An already-compelling ROI for well-paid “knowledge professionals” in the legal and medical professions make them the most likely early adopters. Eventually, LLMs will become ubiquitous in predictable areas where the use cases are obvious, but also in many others where the applications are yet to be imagined.

Early adoption is a good strategy.

It is difficult for the average person to keep up with all the demands on our limited time and resources. However, the saying “knowledge is power” echos behind nearly all human interactions today. Leveraging information through tech is a no-brainer in today's digital economy.

Making an effort to take on a new learning curve can fall prey to procrastination, but acquiring some LLM competency (and even expertise) seems to be a good investment of anyone’s time and effort today.

The “Information super highway” can be thought of as the ‘circulatory system’ of the body public and our national economy. We have seen past examples of entrepreneurs who were first-to-market early adopters of a new tech that went on to dominate the market niche they had entered with foresight and boldness. We “google” for information because Google was the first significant search engine to that market. The British claimed to “hoover” their living room after Hoover became the dominant vaccume cleaner manufacturer in the twentieth century.

The members of my aforementioned Canadian organization, who wish to promote public health information, may benefit by giving some thought to how modern tech may “supercharge” their efforts. Could they become the “hoover” of citizens’ health if they aimed high enough?

To help as many Canadians as possible to LEARN, SHARE & ENGAGE in this worthwhile cause is a potential not to be overlooked IMHO.

I’ve left the best til last

For anyone looking to up their “fitness game”, this podcast offers the best advice you will hear in 2024.