Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
1–10 of 31 posts
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#2Thoughts? We're thinking of individual-level prediction tools, but there are other ways of using this approach. e.g. at the community / city scale with mobile operator data.
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#3My personal opinion: if you can REALLY do what you claim then you should get every country's equivalent of the CDC working with you to MANDATE that this be part of every phone, and then of course you get the revenue from IP licensing.
In fact, I would broaden the scope a bit: make it like the "Emergency Broadcast System" for phones, only two-way.
Lots of privacy implications and the carriers and handset manufacturers would hate it, but I can certainly see it doing long term good.
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#4Thoughts? We're thinking of individual-level prediction tools, but there are other ways of using this approach. e.g. at the community / city scale with mobile operator data.
I don't know if you'd get the same quality of data, but it seems like you could get the same kind of data from a user's Foursquare (location) and Facebook page.
Now that I think about it, I imagine most young people use Facebook messages/wall posts more than phone calls and texts.
Or perhaps a browser plugin that anonymously reports browsing habits.
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#5>When Madan trained software to hunt for this signature in the cellphone data, a daily check correctly identified flu victims 90 per cent of the time.
I'm very surprised by this - it strikes me that I'd expect it to be hard to tell from such data that it wasn't a stomach upset, tiredness, onset of disease or simply a heavy cold. Indeed 90% sounds like it might be higher than correct identification via an interview with a doctor.
>[...] in Rwanda between 2006 and 2009. He saw a clear reduction in people's movement, which may have been due to the disease. But the outbreak was caused by floods, which also limited mobility. Distinguishing between the two possible causes on the basis of phone data alone was impossible, he says.
Makes me the 90% figure highly suspect.
That aside I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to have a smart phone app that gives you epidemiology info in return for entering your health status for the day. To encourage continued use a sort of diary function and stats could be added. Wouldn't this be more predictive than monitoring movement, and less intrusive?
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#6I would market this to pharmaceuticals as a way to effectively gauge demand geography. The value added for them would be supply chain optimization.
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#7Interesting.
Questions
1. How fast can you spot a trend? 2. How is the tracking working? 3. How precise is it.
I could imagine traffic would be a good area to look into.
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#8Apply to YC:)
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#9I think a very strong possibility lies with the very experiment described in the article. Flu is a huge issue at college campuses, high schools, etc. Every level of education involves cramming a bunch of individuals in to small spaces with high amounts of contact (more so than in a prison, for example). In higher education, sexual activity and drinking (i.e. sharing cups) further increases risk of infection. My campus of 5,000 undergrads turned into a textbook example of mass hysteria during last year's swine flu scare. I can only imagine how many hours of education must have been lost through the whole ordeal.
So build an enterprise level system and sell it to individual universities. The school installs your application on each student's phone and receive an aggregate view of anonymous data through a back-end interface. This could give them a real-time look of how the infection is spreading through their community and allow them to be far more responsive in prevention measures. What if they could receive warning that the 3rd floor of Residence Hall A had signs of a potential outbreak? Just bring in those students for a preemptive checkup and stop the bug dead in its tracks.
Of course there is a boat load of legal and privacy issues to sort out for this type of intrusive monitoring. Nothing that couldn't be overcome I don't think (IANAL). I know that my school installs an app on all of our athlete's Facebook accounts for monitoring purposes so this isn't too far off from that.
Good luck with whatever path you choose! I'm always open to discussing startup strategy so feel free to drop me a line.
Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?
#10Thoughts? We're thinking of individual-level prediction tools, but there are other ways of using this approach. e.g. at the community / city scale with mobile operator data.
I don't know if you'd get the same quality of data, but it seems like you could get the same kind of data from a user's Foursquare (location) and Facebook page. Now that I think about it, I imagine most young people use Facebook messages/wall posts more than phone calls and texts. Or perhaps a browser plugin that anonymously reports browsing habits.
The demographics that seem important (e.g. baby-boomers), use mobile phones but not necessarily FSq.