So I lost the Health Developer challenge to ringful. But they had a pretty good app, so there is no shame in that.
More importantly, I think I really made people think.
Steven Downs of project health design, said this about toeleven.org:
However, instead of using Google Health or HealthVault as a platform, Fred used Twitter. Fred had the notion that people already use Twitter to track what is happening with their lives, so why not track what is happening to their health? That builds upon another key finding from Project HealthDesign: help people track their health information by incorporating the process into their existing daily routine, not adding something new
So basically, while they did not chose me to win the contest, they got the point I was making. If I had time to add some graphical goodness to the app, then I think I might have been able to make a better stab at being more competitive from a user experience standpoint, and I think I might have done better. There is always the next contest.
Still I have made strong headway with the notion that the quantified self movement, is merging with the PHR movement. The quantified self guys are pushing this logging to Twitter thing pretty hard. And toeleven.org is one idea about how to fully move Twitter into the PHR space. We will see how that community reacts to these ideas.
I think it is inevitable that the notions of the “life stream” as per facebook and twitter and the notions of traditional PHR will begin to merge. It is not a question of whether?, but rather when?, and how?
toeleven.org is an Open Source app looking for a project manager.. contact me if you are interested in owning the project…
-FT