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I was glad to hear that Asthmapolis recently received venture funding.  They have developed a very simple but clever device that attaches to pretty much any inhaler and logs the time, date and location of each puff.  Tracking when and where each puff occurs allows people that suffer from asthma to track triggers and irritants and learn about their specific symptoms over time.

Asthmapolis is a simple wireless pressure sensor that syncs with a smartphone using Bluetooth.  Once the sensor is paired with the phone, the Asthmapolis app automatically captures data from the sensor when it’s used.   The app uses the phone’s GPS and time keeping features to log information about location, date and time.  That information gets translated into maps, trends and logs that are easy to understand by the consumer/patient and gives them personalized feedback.  Patients can elect to share their data with family members and their physician, allowing for an objective assessment of  how well controlled the condition is.  In the future, patient data can be aggregated with environmental and atmospheric data to give authorities and health care professionals a broader picture of what to expect when high levels of pollen or other environmental triggers have been detected.

Asthmapolis is a great example of how a simple connected sensor can make a real difference in monitoring adherence and treatment of a chronic condition that affects 26 million Americans.

Since the launch of the Nike+ and FitBit in 2006 and 2008 respectively, we’ve been able to count our steps and know how little or how much we’ve moved around in a day.  Now with the advent of some new technology found in the Basis watch, we can add heart rate, sleep and fitness tracking to the mix.  Ok, so all those are interesting parameters to track but probably not sufficient to make a real difference to me or to propel these products into the mainstream.

I spin 3-4 times a week, I’d like to have a sensor that can accurately tell me how many calories I burnt during my ride and how long I spent in my fitness zone.  I know Polar and others can do that, but those trackers are focused on a specific activity.  The same is true of every other activity and associated tracker.  Each activity has different kinematics and I don’t think consumers will buy a fitness band for each sport they do (a rainbow of LiveStrong bands up my arm is definitely passé).  Future band and watch manufacturers need to consider this when designing their new products (think Amiigo).  In my view however, bands and watches are not the answer. Perhaps the quantified movement needs to be steered into embedding sensors into garments, equipment, automobiles and other everyday things that will allow those objects to seamlessly record data that we care about and present it in a unified and meaningful manner in a single place.

But beyond sport buffs, who else cares about this?  Given that I’ve been tracking everything I eat for the last year, I can tell you that there are an awful lot of people that would like to seamlessly track what they ingest. Tracking food intake on your smartphone through an app is painful to say the least and is not the answer for the mainstream consumer – no matter how pretty and well designed the app is.  Solving this is hard, but who ever does it first will have a huge advantage.   Google Glass could help here, but I don’t wear glasses and don’t want to – so now what?

What other things do I want to track?  Well, how about weight without having to get on a scale?  It would be nice if I could trend my weight without having to remember to get on a scale every day – let my shoes do the weighing!

I’d also like to see the relationship between mood, weight, sleep, activity, heart rate, blood pressure,  temperature, smoking, drinking and more all in one place without me having to enter any data or use 10 different devices to track all that – I know all this is coming but in order for it to take off it has to be frictionless and embedded in the fabric (no pun intended here).  Some companies are helping with the data-aggregating piece.  TicTrac just launched publicly this week and there are others coming. Now we just need the device makers to get creative.

What would you like to quantify?