Aza is correct. The fundamental problem inhibiting good personal health is lack of timely feedback. In healthcare, feedback always happens too late. The beer I drink tonight doesn't affect me until my liver fails. Overeating doesn't become a problem until your are stuck in a vicious cycle.
With that said, for the majority of the healthy population, the main indicator of health is weight. Thus for the personal health space, the holy grail is a device which automatically measures the caloric input/output. When I say automatic, I really mean automatic. No writing/taking pictures/tweeting about your food or exercise. Think a watch that tells you how many more calories you can eat in the day. Anything more complicated will fail.
Aza does point out an example population which would be assisted by better technology - individuals with chronic health problems. These people are faced with their disease everyday, whether they want to think about it or not, so they have the most to gain from new technology. There is a niche in improving the "diabetes diary", but in my mind the real power comes from a complete feedback loop. One which encourages care providers (physicians, nurses, etc.) to be more involved in managing their conditions. Think about giving your diabetes diary to your physician. Patterns would emerge for the physicians that would not be seen by the patient. This data could then be the catalyst for change in how the patient manages their disease.
The problem right now is that no personal health system exists with connects patients and providers. The data which resides in your medical record is locked into proprietary systems which are vary reluctant to "open" data. However, the landscape is beginning to change. Industry is realizing a the game-changing health applications need the underlying data which is being housed in clinical institutions to function optimally. Check out SMArt Platforms if your interested in this push.
Summary
Be very careful in the personal health space. Two things I've learned after being in the industry for a while (1) it's very difficult to get people to care enough about their health to take action on it and (2) the most useful applications are the ones which connect patients and care providers which is difficult due to lack of data liquidity.
The other big problem with healthcare is the opaque nest of regulation, data privacy laws, physician buy-in, retail distribution, insurance coverage, and myriad other challenges that get in the way of good design.
There is an elephant's graveyard of cool medical concepts, products, and initiatives that have died because they didn't factor in the realities of medical product design and instead focused on disruptive UI/Business Model/etc.
My company is working on a competitive product (http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662351/blood-glucose-monitor-fo...) so I know how much of a challenge it can be. Good luck to them, the health market needs energy, hopefully they will expend it in the right directions.
I'm friend with both Sutha and Aza and I've been following the progress of this startup from week 1. I'm incredibly hard to impress when it comes to startup ideas but this was one I believed in from the start. The idea of using the smartphone as the new interface for your health information is one with almost limitless potential and these are to wicked smart guys who have the execution ability to pull it off.
Mark my word, these guys aren't playing around. They're trying to build the next billion dollar company.
I noticed a similarity, too. But it's just that, a similarity.
Note that the Fedora guys superimpose an F over a tilted lemniscate where the MH guys are superimposing a plus. Nevermind the color differences and lack of a teardrop background on the MH logo.
This is a minor nit to pick, but why is the link to their twitter account on their website a button? Maybe I'm not representative of the common user, but I subconciously expect buttons to do something (e.g. tweet the address of their site on my behalf), as opposed to taking me somewhere (like a hyperlink). Like I said, this is a very small thing, but it stuck out to me on the website of a company focused on user experience and interaction design.
Glad to see startups trying to solve the big annoying problems in society. Banking (Bank Simple) and Health Care are the big ones that I know about, but I'd love to know about more.
I too am glad to see banking and health be tackled by startups. I also think projects like Votizen may have an important impact on politics which is a great cause too.
Interestingly, I think the problem Google has been trying to solve for 11+ years now is (while certainly not as noble as health) quite important. The ability to find (just about) anything in under a second is amazing - and it pretty much defines the current generation of people. It ultimately means that you are not limited by your access to data, but what you do with it. The impact on innovation/education and most other areas is huge.
I would say one of the major problems we still have as a society is communication. For those of us in 1st world countries this may not sound like reality at all, but there's people who have no way to access the internet, talk to relatives or do emergency (tele)communications. This isn't necessarily an easy problem for a startup, but the road to free, ubiquitous communication is only starting to be paved now.
Aza, if you're reading this, you might want to take a look at GlucoVista - I think they're trying to solve the problem you describe for diabetics.
Also, your website is beautiful, but for some reason it puts me in mind of...the Umbrella Corporation from Resident Evil? I'm not sure, but something along those lines. Not the best association for a health company.
Agreed on the color scheme, the dark grey give me the impression I'm visiting a cancer survivor site or something similar. If your technology is aimed at improving people's health, you want to build up a positive, cheerful tone with your site, which to me at least would mean brighter colors.
Good for Aza. I've been following his work over the past few years and he really seems to be an insanely smart guy with great intuition (his wikipedia article does a pretty good job of supporting this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aza_Raskin). I look forward to see what Massive Health brings to the world. If it's half as good as Aza's design sensibilities, we're in for a real treat.
You're exactly the kind of guy I wish was unable to create an account here.
Why is the post dumb? If not health, what would be the most hard pressing problem our species has? And if you can answer that question, why are you not trying to solve it and are being a troll on the internet instead? I know this post itself reads like a flame, but honestly, I worry whenever I see people whose main purpose here is to dampen the ideas (or opinions) of others.
I'm just guessing but couldn't "dumb as hell" be a reference to this:
"Love that smart people are starting to tackle health problems"
Smart people have been working on health problems for several centuries. Severutus worked out the circulatory system in the 1500s, Lister and Pasteur contributed to the germ theory of illness in the 1800s. Sir Alexander Fleming developed the basic idea of penicillin in the 1920s. Smart people have been working on health issues for a very long time.
I had the same startled reaction to ariels post that joebananas apparently did. The idea that smart people are just now starting to look at health is just... astonishing. Fortunately, joebananas took the karma hit to show us all that HN doesn't think doctors or scientists are "smart people". :/
I think he means it in a different way. Nobody is saying that the work of medical researchers and doctors is unimportant or they aren't smart. However figuring out new ways to connect the population and make them more aware of their health is exciting and with the low barriers to entry with all the technology we have now, it will allow many more people to participate in this field.
I wonder what this means for Panorama... Since it's not close to being done yet (as far as something like that ever gets done), it could surely use more of Aza's design chops.
With that said, for the majority of the healthy population, the main indicator of health is weight. Thus for the personal health space, the holy grail is a device which automatically measures the caloric input/output. When I say automatic, I really mean automatic. No writing/taking pictures/tweeting about your food or exercise. Think a watch that tells you how many more calories you can eat in the day. Anything more complicated will fail.
Aza does point out an example population which would be assisted by better technology - individuals with chronic health problems. These people are faced with their disease everyday, whether they want to think about it or not, so they have the most to gain from new technology. There is a niche in improving the "diabetes diary", but in my mind the real power comes from a complete feedback loop. One which encourages care providers (physicians, nurses, etc.) to be more involved in managing their conditions. Think about giving your diabetes diary to your physician. Patterns would emerge for the physicians that would not be seen by the patient. This data could then be the catalyst for change in how the patient manages their disease.
The problem right now is that no personal health system exists with connects patients and providers. The data which resides in your medical record is locked into proprietary systems which are vary reluctant to "open" data. However, the landscape is beginning to change. Industry is realizing a the game-changing health applications need the underlying data which is being housed in clinical institutions to function optimally. Check out SMArt Platforms if your interested in this push.
Summary
Be very careful in the personal health space. Two things I've learned after being in the industry for a while (1) it's very difficult to get people to care enough about their health to take action on it and (2) the most useful applications are the ones which connect patients and care providers which is difficult due to lack of data liquidity.