Round two of the juice-packaging cage match started late last year with Pepsi’s Tropicana fiasco, and this week Coke’s Minute Maid unveiled a juicy new look (courtesy of Master of Design cover boy David Butler).
Blogging pioneer Anil Dash is bringing crowd expertise to the sizable task of bridging government policy and technology with Expert Labs. Speaking of sizable, that nap-inducing Thanksgiving feast isn’t just bad for your waistline, it can be taxing for the planet too. So localize your feast, then strap on a next-gen activity monitor and know the exact second you finish burning it off.
An uber-athlete, I'm not. But over the last year I have learned to balance long shifts hunched over a desk with regular time on my yoga mat and I begrudgingly took up running to whittle my waist. So nothing short of dread skipped down my spine when I read the poster hanging up at my gym: Almost three-quarters of annual weight gain happens between Halloween and Valentine's.
Boycotting the holidays isn't an option (we're talking pumpkin pie, people). And putting Wii Fit on my holiday wish list doesn't seem like enough: A recent study by American Council on Exercise and the University of Wisconsin found that the aerobic benefits of the video game are "underwhelming" (duh).
But maybe the next generation of activity monitors could boost my motivation -- and maybe even my movement -- during the impending eat-fest known as winter. Thanks to the 3D accelerometer, tracking your every step and calorie burned is as easy as strapping on a slim device. I test-drove two new activity monitors for Fast Company -- the fitbit and Philips DirectLife -- and found innovations and drawbacks in both. But which would win in head-to-head combat?
Round One: The Device
In terms of the physical gadget that you carry around, both activity monitors are lightweight and unobtrusive. But the fitbit blows DirectLife away. Built like a clothespin, the fitbit attaches to shirt straps or waistbands and can be moved throughout the day. The DirectLife is a slim square of plastic that I can drop into my pocket (though I lost my first one this way), wear on a strap around my neck, or velcro into a tiny pouch on my belt loop. In other words, on days that I'm bereft of pockets, I need to employ an accessory to attach the DirectLife to my torso. And though I can change where I'm wearing the device each day--I indicate the position on my online profile--for maximum accuracy Philips wants me to be consistent throughout the day. So, when I pull on jeans in the morning and drop the device into my pocket, that means I'm going to be tucking the DirectLife into the waistband of my pocketless yoga pants that afternoon, rather than wearing it around my neck. Winner: Fitbit
Round Two: Display Feedback
The fitbit lets me scroll through four screens, so I know calories burned, steps taken and miles traveled throughout the day, along with seeing a flower that grows or shrinks depending on my activity levels. The DirectLife doesn't use any numbers, instead displaying nine dots that light up as I "earn" each one. The amount of activity required to earn each dot rises each week, as the 12-week program pushes me from 620 to 990 calories burned each day. To hit my daily target, I need to get six dots to light up; at nine dots, I'm a rockstar. I'm initially fascinated by the sea of data the fitbit offers, even comparing its calorie-burn computation to the elliptical dashboard and treadmill dashboard at the gym. But it's both too much (1,886 calories, 5893 steps, 2.57 miles--ugh) and too little. The universal goal of 70,000 steps a week seems as blandly helpful as saying I should work out three times a week for 30 minutes. In contrast, the DirectLife's display doesn't require context or analysis. Four dots at the end of the day? Keep moving, fatty. Seven dots? High five (the LED lights even do a jazzy little dance when you overstep your goal). Winner: DirectLife
Round Three: Beyond the Device
The biggest difference between fitbit and DirectLife is what's offered beyond the device. The DirectLife Web site shows your 12-week customized program with daily, weekly, and monthly targets. A (human) personal coach e-mails you initially to learn your goals, is available for questions, and sends follow-up emails if you don't sync your device or miss your goals for a few days in a row. (In the course of five weeks, I exchange five e-mails with my coach, Jen, and take her advice to schedule activity in my calendar at the start of each week.) The fitbit's Web site is far more ambitious, if still a bit clunky. It lets you track your food and compare calories consumed with calories burned. You can also input activities that aren't picked up well by accelerometers, such as weight lifting or yoga (bonus points!). But you're left to interpret that huge sea of data yourself and to set goals and create a program solo. I was primed to give the fitbit extra points for its ability to wirelessly sync data when it's within range of its docking station, but because I use a laptop I never left the docking station plugged in, diminishing that feature. Winner: DirectLife
Round Four: Price
A Benjamin is all the spending power you'll need for both the fitbit and Directlife. That $99 for DirectLife buys you the device plus 12 weeks of life coaching, with each month after costing $10. The fitbit also costs $99 and the company has plans to roll-out a subscription service of life coaching in the future. Winner: DirectLife, by a life coach's hair
A mega-athlete looking to take your workouts to the next level? Uh, you'd probably do better to invest in a high-tech heart monitor. But both the DirectLife and fitbit seem solid fits for a particular demographc: people who want to move more and want to get patted on the back (through blinking dots and blossoming digital flowers) for the accumulation of baby steps. Because, really, aren't you more likely to take the stairs than the elevator when you know someone--or some thing--is counting those steps?
I've been eager to try out the fitbit since talking with its designer, NewDeal's Gadi Amit, this past summer (full disclosure: Gadi Amit is a regular, unpaid contributor to Fast Company's expert design blogs). The tiny, wireless $99 activity monitor is worn 24/7 and tracks steps taken, calories burned, miles traveled, and even the quality and duration of sleep. It then syncs automatically to your computer so you can dive deep into all that data and log your nutrition.
"The design challenge with the slew of new technologies that allow you to monitor your health is to blend them seamlessly into modern life," says Amit. So, how seamless and effective is the fitbit? I decided to test-drive it to find out.
The device
At two inches high, half an inch wide, and weighing just fourth-tenths of an ounce, the fitbit is closer in stature to an iPod shuffle than a traditional pedometer. It's also incredibly sleek: A single button toggles through LED-lit screens while a clothespin-like construct lets the fitbit attach securely to any fabric on your torso.
My take
The fitbit is so slim and light that I forget I'm wearing it almost immediately. I'm told that wearing it loose in my pocket will decrease its accuracy slightly, but I can move it around throughout the day (at my pants waist for work, clipped to my sports bra at the gym, and then to the strap of my pocketless, waistless nightgown at home). On days when I wear dresses, I hook it to the top of my tights and am amazed that its silhouette is undetectable through the dress (until, once, I make the mistake of blabbing to a group of friends about the next-gen monitor I'm wearing and am badgered until I fish under my dress to retrieve it. They are agog at how tiny it is and how much it can monitor--and I don't blame them).
The data
The fitbit's accelerometer tracks motion, even when you're asleep (a special band secures the device at your wrist, where it can more easily count how many times you wake in the night and how fidgety you are before slumber). With the touch of a button, each day's data is displayed on the device in real time: calories burned, steps taken, miles and traveled. A fourth screen shows a blue flower that grows or shrinks depending on how active you've been for the day. When you register your fitbit, it calculates your BMR (basal metabolic rate, meaning the number of calories you'd burn even if you just lay in bed all day) and includes that number in its caloric feedback.
My take
Knowing how many miles I've traveled turns me into everyone's best friend on group walks--any time I stroll more than 15 minutes with someone, I'm asked to read out the distance we've traveled. Miles are easier to wrap my mind around than steps taken, where 2,000 and 10,000 both sound kind of awesome (but only the latter is). While the miles read-out does nudge me to move more, the calories screen has the odd effect of encouraging my eating. I burned nearly 500 calories just waking up and getting to work? Score. Now pass the doughnuts. On days that the display reads 2,800 calories, my eating is ... let's just say gleeful and robust. Halfway through my week-long trial, I've learned to flip quickly past my calories and steps displays and focus on miles and my favorite feedback (which is also the weirdest)--a single flower that uses some black-box algorithm to shrink or grow based on how active I'm being. An hour at the gym and my flower is as long as the device, with a handful of delicate LED leaves. Six hours stuck at my desk and the flower is a squat weed, begging for growth.
The Web site
Plug the fitbit's docking device into your computer and any time you're within 50 feet, the device will sync automatically with fitbit.com. There, you can log your food, see minute-by-minute breakdowns of your activity, log exercises that don't get the cred they deserve from an accelerometer (like weight lifting and yoga), and scrutinize your sleep patterns. Creators James Park and Eric Friedman are planning to roll out more community features this December and are considering adding more detailed analysis and life-coach support as part of a subscription model in the future.
My take
The fitbit is so well designed, it's hard not to be disappointed by the Web site. I'm delighted I can manually input exercises like yoga to keep my data and trends as accurate as possible, but the activity search function is clunky and frustrating. (No elliptical machine? Really? Or could I just not find it after 20 minutes?) And I can either put my data under a microscope with the day's view or a telescope with 30-day view. Why not let me look at weekly trends? The nutrition-tracking capabilities are a smart element and because I've used food-logging sites and apps sporadically over the years I can say that fitbit.com's is pretty good. But still, I can bring myself to painstakingly enter every splash of half & half and every handful of trail mix only one day out of eight. "Where's the fitbit chip I can implant into my throat that will track all my food for me automatically and wirelessly?" one friend asks. If only.
The goal
For folks who care about all calories in and all calories out, the fitbit's overlaid graph of activity and eating makes weight loss into a crazily quantifiable counting game. For the non-calorie-obsessed, Fitbit.com offers two weekly activity goals: steps taken or miles traveled. I'm not sure if the user's starting weight and BMI factor into the goals, but 70,000 steps seems like an awfully round number to be customized.
My take
The data streaming out of this pint-sized gadget quickly became overwhelming, which is probably why I started ignoring some screens and clinging to that more holistic-seeming electronic flower. And the Web site still felt too beta to help me neatly slice and dice my data into manageable goals. Some days I burn 1,800 calories and some days I burn 2,800--but unless I'm willing to create my own context by vigilantly logging my food intake, those numbers don't mean much.
Curious about other next-gen activity monitors? The Fast Company staff is test-driving the Philips Directlife. Read our reviews here and here.
Remember when the iPod made your music collection mobile, letting you access and sort your library from anywhere? Boston Scientific is on track to do the same thing with patient medical data, via an upcoming iPhone app. "It's all about capturing those micromoments in the day--when a surgeon is waiting for the OR to be prepped for the next implant but can't sit down at a computer, when a patient's family member calls at 6 a.m. with a question but the office isn't opened yet," says Joseph Weber, Director of R+D for Boston Scientific's Latitude application. "Mobility brings so many compelling values to the system."
Latitude is already on the market as a patient monitoring system, but when Boston Scientific brought a dozen dovtors to Arizona for a multi-day brainstorming session earlier this year to push the platform further, the biggest desire the docs had was to make Latitude mobile. While currently targeted to cardiac rhythm management and still in prototype, the Latitude iPhone app lets physicians access patient records, monitor their implanted devices, tap into patient support networks, and schedule follow-up care. (For a more whimsical app, there's a heart monitoring game for teens.)
Dr. Leslie Saxon demoed the Latitude iPhone app, created in partnership with the University of Southern California, at last week's Body Computing Conference. While scheduling appointments doesn't seem pulse-raising at first, the Latitude app has a compellingly sleek interface and is useful as hell. In less than five minutes, Dr. Saxon had looked at a patient's heart rhythms, sent an e-mail to the nursing staff to schedule a visit, and alerted the patient's primary physician. "It's the kind of work that I'd find particularly onerous at 7 p.m. on a Friday," says Saxon. Boston Scientific is mum on when, exactly, Latitude will be available to free up doctors' Friday nights.
The 3-D accelerometer has transformed mobile gaming (hello, iPhone), console gaming (thanks, Wii!), and now...fitness? The tech that accurately measures your movements has birthed a new generation of health monitors that track your daily activity and present it through a data-rich Web site. The big question: Can all that data be translated into a healthier lifestyle? I signed up with a group of Fast Company coworkers to test-drive one such device created by Philips; it's called DirectLife.
Philips is marketing the DirectLife device primarily to companies, which may be eager to front the initial costs of the program in exchange for healthier employees and thus lower health-care costs. But the device is also being sold directly to consumers. It costs $99, plus $10/month for access to the Web site and coaching after the initial 12-week program.
The device: The DirectLife monitor is housed in a slim, sleek square of white plastic can be worn around your neck, in your pocket, or in a customized belt pouch. And no need to be delicate: Philips tested DirectLife by running it through the washing machine and driving automobiles on top of it, so it can follow you into the pool or shower.
My take: The first three days of wearing DirectLife in my pockets, I marveled aloud at how awesome it is--So light! So slim! So barely detectable!--until the evening of the third day, when I realized it was no longer resting in my shallow pockets (oops). Now nervous about losing my replacement device, I wear it as a necklace, enduring a day's worth of cocked eyebrows and questions before I slipped the device under my shirt, where it dangles like an external pacemaker.
The plan: Participants wear DirectLife for an eight-day assessment period, then sync it to the Web site to learn their average daily caloric burn and their weekly and 12-week goals. They can compare activity with other users and coworkers (as a percentage of each person's goals) for added competition motivation.
My take: I'm told to act natural during the assessment period, but it's hard not to want to take one more lap round the water cooler knowing that each and every step is being tallied. My fitness routine is anything but routine: four days of driving a desk, followed by a three-day Bikram yoga blitz, and a 10-mile stroll through downtown L.A.
The goal: To get everyone moving 30 minutes every day and to raise the bar on those already active. Rather than take you from sloth to health all at once, the program charts your weekly goals, nudging you forward by a percentage each week. Any large project broken down into sufficiently small parts...
My take: My (human!) fitness coach emails to ask if I have any personal goals, and I tell her I want to be more consistent with my workouts. At the end of the assessment period, I plug in and dive into the data. I'm not too surprised that I burn a scant 625 calories a day on average, with some days closer to 400 and others more than 1,100. I am surprised, though, that this still qualifies me as (on the high end of) sedentary, a word I apply to people like my suburban parents, who drive everywhere and whose only weekly activity is bowling.
The follow-through: DirectLife tells me that at the end of 12 weeks I should be up to 845 calories each day; my goal this week is to hit 644 calories.
By laying the device against a flat surface for a second or two, a series of six green dots light up to show what percent of my daily goal I've hit so far.
My take: After an engrossing half hour of poking around in my data (that walk to the subway only burns 40 calories!), I'm tempted to give in to my usual patterns and push all activity to the weekend. The Web site reminds me, though, that daily activity is more healthy overall than a sloth-and-scurry approach to fitness. The first day that I'm actually armed with my data, I race around Manhattan all morning, then sit stationary at my desk all evening. When I get home at 10 p.m., I want nothing more than to climb onto the sofa and zone out for an hour, but before I climb the two flights to my apartment, I balance the DirectLife against my palm and get my reading for the day so far: only two measly green dots light up. Begrudgingly, I call my fiancée down to the sidewalk and we snake our way around the neighborhood. An hour later, I've earned all six dots (booyah) and my foul mood over being goaded to exercise by a hunk of plastic has lifted. I actually feel, well, pretty good.
Can I stick with it? Will the habits last? Is my replacement device destined to be lost as well? Stay tuned for more reports from me and other testers during the 12-week program.
The possible benefits of body computing--the use of implanted, digested, or wearable devices that transmit health data--are almost as numerous as the number of tech gizmos the concept has spawned. There's Nike Plus and next-gen pedometers, smart pills and smart bandages, iPhone apps, and intricate pacemakers.
What's clear is that it all adds up to better care through more long-term data and observation, quicker observations over larger populations, and increased therapy development for less-common disorders. But the fundamental shift that comes with body computing, says Dr. Leslie Saxon, cofounder of the Body Computing Conference, is "dignifying the patient by allowing them access in a connected world."
But does access equal ownership?
That's the burning question in the health-care space. Most consumers would take a "my body, my data" stance. But there's no quick answer, just long-term repercussions, says Brian Fitzgerald of the FDA. "These are very durable, intractable problems," he told the group of engineers, medical professionals, and designers gathered at this third annual conference. "If I share data with you because we're playing a game, years later that data could be used against me. Where does my privacy end?"
The perfect pause-inducing example? A personal genetic test. "Do I have the right to share a personal genetic profile?" he asked the group gathered at this third annual conference. "That profile doesn't just affect me. It affects future generations--they didn't give me the right to share that profile with you. It's necessary to rethink the very fundamental models of what we do and try to calibrate for the 21st century technologies."
Does that mean the FDA could one day regulate our ability to share our personal genetic data, one nervous attendee asked. "No," Fitzgerald replied. "We still live in a democracy."
When you think of body computing--monitoring physical health using technology--it generally conjures images of middle-aged or elderly folks in sterile settings. But the future of body computing is in the teen market, especially if the iPhone heart rate monitor prototype introduced today at the third Body Computing Conference ever goes to market.
To play the game, you wear a patch that transmits your heart rate to an iPhone app. (This capability alone would find a market in the running world, since it does not exist today, but why stop there?) The device takes the heart rate data and broadcasts it over Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and email turning it into a social game. You could snap a picture, send it to a friend over your phone, for instance, and get a read of your friend's heart rate when they see the picture (creepy!). Or, using Bluetooth, you could get a snapshot of the heart rates of people who are wearing the patches around you (fun party game?).
"We were told it wasn't worth designing for teenagers if there wasn't a
strong self-play piece," says Dr. Leslie Saxon, the conference
cofounder and Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine at USC. "So, pretend
we're teenagers and we're going to broadcast to each other incessantly
as we do math homework."
The games are only roughly sketched out at this point, but the organizers of the conference have partnered with the medical device giant Corventis in creating the patch and working iPhone app shown today. And while there are no plans to bring the patch to market as of yet, it does offer a window into the vast number of as yet untapped possibilities presented by body computing.
That hospitals need to embrace health IT is a no-brainer. If Electronic Health Records, for instance, eliminated as many as 200,000 drug mistakes it would save a combined $1 billion or more each year. Congress has dedicated $30 billion stimulus dollars to move hospitals to electronic records, offering bonus payments for nimble doctors able to make the transition by 2011 and threatening penalties by any stragglers after a 2015 deadline.
But going from a no-brainer to a next step is, well, tricky. And without a clear blueprint outlining how to move from clipboard to computers, hospitals are left to improvise (yikes). Here's a look at a few health IT systems in test-drive mode:
Laptops for Note-taking Prescription: The University of Virginia hired a bunch of scribes--yes, that's really their job title--to trail doctors, taking notes on laptops as doctors talk with patients and review test results. The Upside: UVa has created a "nearly 100%" paperless hospital. Side Effects: I'm pretty sure that stepping back 2,000 years in time is not a sustainable way to move the medical system into the future. Some have speculated that inserting another person in the process invites yet more errors.
iPhone Patient Charts Prescription: Stanford Hospital started a trial last month with Apple and Epic Systems that lets docs access and update patient charts on the iPhone. The Upside: Doctors can access patient info anywhere, any time, and more easily transfer complete records to other doctors. Side Effects: Patients' privacy and security has been called into question by watchdog groups, which are queasy about the portable all-in-one device. Having access to sensitive patient info through an app icon that sits next to Diner Dash 2 and Texas Hold 'Em does seem startling. And awesome.
BlackBerrys as 21st Century Pagers Prescription: The University of Pittsburg Medical Center replaced the pagers strapped to nurses and doctors with souped-up Blackberrys. The Upside: Turns out, Blackberrys can do everything a pager can and (shocker) so much more! For example, one app lets ambulance staff send EKG images and vital stats directly to doctors' Blackberrys, so they're prepped before they hit the ER. Side Effects: Possible Blackberry thumb. Privacy concerns.
YouTube may soon introduce a new set of customization tools, allowing users to tweak their viewing dashboard. The speculation stems from YouTube opening up about the biggest tension it must balance in designing its interface: Casual users, who make up the bulk of YouTube visitors, want a super-streamlined interface with few distractions. But the smaller group of super-users, who drive YouTube's content and success, want a tricked-out dashboard for analytics, video sharing, growing their audience, and generating revenue on the site.
To push past traditional usability testing--seeing how many people can complete a certain task, such as uploading a video, with a particular interface--YouTube employed a method called FIDO, first developed at Fidelity Investments. Various video elements were cut out and stuck on magnets, allowing users to create their own ideal site. Casual and hardcore users tended to cluster around two interfaces.
The DIY method may have been used internally to give YouTube insight, but it's no surprise that most people actually fell somewhere along the casual-hardcore spectrum. A no-brainer next step would be for YouTube to open that customization toolkit to everyone.
Companies have crowdsourced everything from ad campaigns to package design, usually through contests. But Spanish telecom giant Telefonica is putting a new degree of trust in users, handing over the marketing, technical support, and customer service reins to any customers looking to lower their phone bill.
It works like this: Customers can earn free calls and texts by pushing the new mobile network, called Giffgaff (a Scottish term for "mutual giving"), on their friends and family. They can rack up a bigger discount on their bill by answering customer-service queries online, while an eBay-like voting system will help ensure thoughtful, accurate answers get rewarded most. Future plans include crowdsourcing ad campaigns among customers and even voting on the direction of the company and which user-generated innovations to implement.
The biggest hurdle, of course, is getting a groundswell large enough to handle all of the customer queries for the fledgling network and incentives strong enough to keep those volunteers coming back. While Giffgaff will have a staffed billing center, there are no plans to supplement customer volunteers with paid service reps.
Hoards of fans have happily tapped their creativity to extol the merits of HP or Doritos in user-generated ads. Thousands of people have painstakingly detailed the highs and lows of their neighborhood bistros on user-generated review sites like Yelp. But it's hard to imagine answering questions such as "how the hell do I sync my address book!?" will scratch the same itch. Marketing contests work because they're a stage for creativity and possible fame; review sites work because, well, we've all heard the idiom about opinions and assholes, right?
We're not sold that a discounted mobile bill will lure in enough drones
to do the thankless, anonymous grunt work of keeping customers connected.
Mercedes Benz unveiled an app that lets you control your car with the iPhone. But Intel one-ups the luxe car maker with an implantable chip that lets you control your computer using only your thoughts.
Round two of the juice-packaging cage match started late last year with Pepsi’s Tropicana fiasco, and this week Coke’s Minute Maid unveiled a juicy new look (courtesy of Master of Design cover boy David Butler). 
Blogging pioneer Anil Dash is bringing crowd expertise to the sizable task of bridging government policy and technology with Expert Labs. Speaking of sizable, that nap-inducing Thanksgiving feast isn’t just bad for your waistline, it can be taxing for the planet too. So localize your feast, then strap on a next-gen activity monitor and know the exact second you finish burning it off.
In terms of the physical gadget that you carry around, both activity monitors are lightweight and unobtrusive. But the fitbit blows DirectLife away. Built like a clothespin, the fitbit attaches to shirt straps or waistbands and can be moved throughout the day. The DirectLife is a slim square of plastic that I can drop into my pocket (though I lost my first one this way), wear on a strap around my neck, or velcro into a tiny pouch on my belt loop. In other words, on days that I'm bereft of pockets, I need to employ an accessory to attach the DirectLife to my torso. And though I can change where I'm wearing the device each day--I indicate the position on my online profile--for maximum accuracy Philips wants me to be consistent throughout the day. So, when I pull on jeans in the morning and drop the device into my pocket, that means I'm going to be tucking the DirectLife into the waistband of my pocketless yoga pants that afternoon, rather than wearing it around my neck. Winner: Fitbit
The fitbit lets me scroll through four screens, so I know calories burned, steps taken and miles traveled throughout the day, along with seeing a flower that grows or shrinks depending on my activity levels. The DirectLife doesn't use any numbers, instead displaying nine dots that light up as I "earn" each one. The amount of activity required to earn each dot rises each week, as the 12-week program pushes me from 620 to 990 calories burned each day. To hit my daily target, I need to get six dots to light up; at nine dots, I'm a rockstar. I'm initially fascinated by the sea of data the fitbit offers, even comparing its calorie-burn computation to the elliptical dashboard and treadmill dashboard at the gym. But it's both too much (1,886 calories, 5893 steps, 2.57 miles--ugh) and too little. The universal goal of 70,000 steps a week seems as blandly helpful as saying I should work out three times a week for 30 minutes. In contrast, the DirectLife's display doesn't require context or analysis. Four dots at the end of the day? Keep moving, fatty. Seven dots? High five (the LED lights even do a jazzy little dance when you overstep your goal). Winner: DirectLife
The 3-D accelerometer has transformed mobile gaming (hello, iPhone), console gaming (thanks, Wii!), and now...fitness? The tech that accurately measures your movements has birthed a new generation of health monitors that track your daily activity and present it through a data-rich Web site. The big question: Can all that data be translated into a healthier lifestyle? I signed up with a group of Fast Company coworkers to test-drive one such device created by Philips; it's called DirectLife. 
The goal: To get everyone moving 30 minutes every day and to raise the bar on those already active. Rather than take you from sloth to health all at once, the program charts your weekly goals, nudging you forward by a percentage each week. Any large project broken down into sufficiently small parts...
The possible benefits of body computing--the use of implanted, digested, or wearable devices that transmit health data--are almost as numerous as the number of tech gizmos the concept has spawned. There's Nike Plus and next-gen pedometers, smart pills and smart bandages, iPhone apps, and intricate pacemakers.
When you think of body computing--monitoring physical health using technology--it generally conjures images of middle-aged or elderly folks in sterile settings. But the future of body computing is in the teen market, especially if the iPhone heart rate monitor prototype introduced today at the third 
That hospitals need to embrace health IT is a no-brainer. If Electronic Health Records, for instance, eliminated as many as 200,000 drug mistakes it would save a combined $1 billion or more each year. Congress has dedicated $30 billion stimulus dollars to move hospitals to electronic records, offering bonus payments for nimble doctors able to make the transition by 2011 and threatening penalties by any stragglers after a 2015 deadline. 
Companies have crowdsourced everything from ad campaigns to package design, usually through contests. But Spanish telecom giant Telefonica is putting a new degree of trust in users, handing over the marketing, technical support, and customer service reins to any customers looking to lower their phone bill.
The biggest hurdle, of course, is getting a groundswell large enough to handle all of the customer queries for the fledgling network and incentives strong enough to keep those volunteers coming back. While Giffgaff will have a staffed billing center, there are no plans to supplement customer volunteers with paid service reps. 
