In 1900, an American man could expect to live on average until he was 45 years old. By 1940, that life-expectancy number had jumped to 62 years, while for women the average number increased from 51 years to 66 years.
That unprecedented advance in public health was largely the result of the spread of disease-fighting technologies like vaccines, antibiotics and improved sanitation.
A similar “very auspicious moment” is at hand in public health, according to Thomas Goetz, executive editor of Wired and author of a new book, “The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine” (Rodale, 2010).
This time, the potential revolution in public health, Mr. Goetz said in an interview Friday, will be led by digital technologies that enable people to live healthier lives and make better treatment decisions.
On the healthier lives front, the digital tools are mostly not strikingly high-tech (unlike genomics), but ones that are suddenly affordable and useful. For example, Web sites with personal databases, smartphone and Twitter apps for logging diet and exercise routines, pedometers, accelerometers and heart-rate monitors.
Constant feedback of personal information, studies show, can act as an incentive to nudge people to adopt healthier habits. Digital tools, he writes, “offer self-awareness, a way to turn action into change and to do it scientifically, rigorously, methodically. To do it with data.”
In last Sunday’s “Unboxed” column, I wrote about the emerging “pay for prevention” health industry, led by companies that create programs for corporate clients that use digital technology and financial incentives to prompt employees to exercise more and eat wisely. The young companies developing these programs include RedBrick Health (backed by Kleiner Perkins and Highland Capital Partners), Tangerine Wellness and Virgin HealthMiles, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.)
Money incentives can help, Mr. Goetz said, but the key to long-term changes in health behavior is engaging people emotionally as well as rationally. Everyone has heard the simple health edict: Eat less, exercise more. But too few of us follow that entirely rational advice. Witness the American epidemic of obesity. Behavior change is hard.
In his book, Mr. Goetz points to Weight Watchers as an example of an approach that works. Its points system is information presented in simplified, understandable terms. It has long used group meetings for social support, encouragement and friendly prodding – face-to-face social networking.
“Weight Watchers kind of lucked into these principles, but now they can be democratized because of technology,” Mr. Goetz said.
The Web, he notes, is made for information gathering and social networking – an ideal medium, it seems, for tracking activity and changing behavior. Digital tools, Mr. Goetz said, open the door as never before to a “personal path to better health,” by combining personalized data with the social support of online communities.