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1) Problem: People do not care about physiological health unless there is a clear connection to its effect on financial health.

Solution: An integrated health insurance+care provider company (a la Kaiser Permanente) that charges as little as a cell phone bill for those who chose to live healthy lifestyles and have the qualitative and quantitative test results to show for it. The financial incentive encourages ensured’s to take full responsibility of their health.

2) Problem: Early adopter consumer-patients don’t have easy, affordable access to the diagnostic tools that would help them track their own biomarkers. When willing self-experimenters are hindered, research insights and innovation is slower to come about. Most so-called “direct-to-consumer” labs still require doctor orders in some states.

Solution: A REAL direct-to-consumer lab that offers a full spectrum of tests, including food allergy, metal toxicity, salivary and blood-spot hormone tests, and female reproductive cycle profiles.

Wellnessfx.com is close to the solution for a more lay-person target market, but still misses some basic but essential tests like free T3 and free T4 in their thyroid panel, which is much more informative in showing thyroid function than the TSH “gold standard” that most doctors use today, which only tell them pituitary function, not thyroid function. If any doctors read this and get upset, that may be a good thing. True “disruptive” innovation is incompatible with the establishment.

Here’s my application video. Enjoy!

Audio Recording:

This blog was born as a result of many people requesting my advice on health, lab tests, nutrition, and productivity. I decided to make the rewarding process of helping others into a more scalable endeavor by posting my thoughts publicly. Although I started with a narrow focus on medical lab tests and the healthcare system, I may branch into other related topics over time based on interest and demand.

At I Hack Health, I teach readers how to enhance physical and mental performance while navigating the modern healthcare system using tested techniques, eg. saving $3000 on a diagnostic test.

Using my perspective as a former national level athlete, health experimenter, Crossfit certified coach, and patient, I provide readers with actionable advice on managing their health.

This project was inspired by a thought experiment in answer to the question:

What problem, if solved by someone else, would make the world so much better? What would be the solution to that problem?

The Human Hacker House is my work-in-progress solution to the slew of problems in the American healthcare system, in particular: consumer access to the tools that foster discoveries in health and personal responsibility for our health.

H^3 is Silicon Valley’s first live-work hackerspace for health. In 2 months, I found 5 tenants, attracted 30 community members, and garnered $5000 worth of startup resources. The 4 founding tenants and I are currently searching for rental property and sponsors. I learned from my previous startup to focus more on applying Lean Startup principles and Steve Blank’s customer development processes while we are building a community.

Although this talk was directed at a very specific audience, the general theme was regarding healthcare technology and re-framed as such below. The main points are:

1) From my experience as a patient, one issue at the root of the broken healthcare system today is that it is difficult for a proactive patient to find good care from doctors. Many doctors are averse to considering data collected outside of the doctor’s office or cost-intensive labs. This is despite that, most of the time, simple (and free) quantitative measures would suffice in determining the effectiveness of a dietary change, new pill, or other treatment regimen.

2) For healthcare innovation to happen in the direction of evidence-based healthcare/treatments, there are certain qualities that successful technologies have integrated into the existing, mainstream system. Those qualities are: Communication, Efficiency, and Empowerment.

a. Kaiser Permanente’s IT portal is an example of increased Communication between physicians and patients.
b. Sutter Health Clinic’s online system for ordering lab tests, getting doctor approval, and receiving test results is an example of increased Efficiency. It decreases time of the entire process from the typical 2+ weeks to 3 days.
c. Genomera’s online platform for open source clinical trials is an example of patient Empowerment.
d. Ancestral Health Insurance’s proposed system for letting members take responsibility for their own health is another example of Empowerment.

Given these existing successes, what are some other ways technology can innovate for healthcare? The discussion is just beginning.

Too often, an entrepreneur’s business ideas are fraught with emotions, illusions of grandeur, and leaps in logic that cloud our decision making abilities. The following way of evaluating business ideas enables one to make rational decisions about which idea or path to pursue.

My foray into entrepreneurship led to this ongoing list of business ideas, good and bad, ranked in order from high to low potential for success. Potential success rankings are based on various factors including market size, market’s willingness and ability to pay, manufacturing time, cost per unit, ability to differentiate product from competition, and level of personal interest.

Representing each factor is a question, eg. “Can I differentiate product from existing competition?”, to which the answer can be “yes”, “no”, or “maybe”, which are then translated to numerical ratings: “yes”=1, “no”=0, and “maybe”=0.5. The numerical “answers” to each question can then be added up into a total feasibility score, the higher score indicating higher potential for success.