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Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

newscientist.com

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Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#21

Post by SwellJoe »

At the direct-to-consumers level, think "I've fallen and I can't get up!" Automatic detection of illness and alerts for the old and infirm could be a potential market, though research on college students is not going to be at all effective for monitoring old people. And, if it can only detect trends rather than a specific individual situation, then it won't work in this context.

As others mentioned, making it a standard part of all phones might be something you could sell to governments, particularly in areas where flu frequently becomes epidemic.

It's a public health issue, which isn't usually an extremely easy to go-to-market area, I would think. Since it doesn't cure people of the flu, and doesn't help prevent it in any particular individual, it has nearly zero market value for any individual. I wouldn't even have a reason to install it for free...what good would it do me?

Is there some element of your research and tech that can be generalized to spot other kinds of trends? Trendspotting is extremely valuable, particularly to marketers...Google would probably acquire a company that can effectively trendspot from mobile devices, and even if they didn't, a mobile ad platform with trendspotting would be incredibly lucrative.

Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#22

Post by anmol »

SwellJoe wrote: post #21

At the direct-to-consumers level, think "I've fallen and I can't get up!" Automatic detection of illness and alerts for the old and infirm could be a potential market, though research on college students is not going to be at all effective for monitoring old people. And, if it can only detect trends rather than a specific individual situation, then it won't work in this context. As others mentioned, making it a stand…

The challenge with 'think I've fallen' is that you constantly have to ping the accelerometer. From a battery-life perspective, that kills the smartphone. Also, its hard to distinguish those pings from

For that particular application, its better to use custom body-worn hardware (e.g. fitbit).

Regarding spotting trends in face-to-face networks, we've done similar analysis political opinions during the 2008 election campaign.

Results here: http://web.media.mit.edu/~anmol/political-2.pdf

Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#23

Post by Mz »

anmol wrote: post #19
Mz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought: You might see if this could get funded as a means to help seriously at risk populations reduce their risk, spot problems at an earlier stage and so on. I have a form of cystic fibrosis, as does my 23 year old son. We have gotten a great deal healthier than doctors claim is possible largely by making dietary and lifestyle changes to protect us from illness, rather than waiting until we are ill and loading up…

Thanks for the kind words, and good luck to your family. We really do want to make this into a tool that can help people, if possible. My intuition is that being able to quantify and visualize 'quality-of-life' automatically, will help support diet and lifestyle changes. What kind of features/UI would you like to see in such a tool? Would it be better is this was generic (e.g. like Facebook), or something specificall…

What kind of features/UI would you like to see in such a tool? Would it be better is this was generic (e.g. like Facebook), or something specifically for patients with CF?

The CF market per se is pretty small. I wouldn't look to customize it specifically for them. I also think that "good practices" generalize. If you can come up with some parameters that work well with vulnerable populations, it should work regardless of their specific issue.

Features that might be nice: A text message "alert" when early indicators are noticed and perhaps a means for the customer to put in custom "prompts" so that, whatever their medical condition, they can self-remind (for example: that they might have forgotten to take a particular medication). People with medical conditions often become "forgetful" as their condition starts heading into a downward spiral and the sicker they get, the harder it gets to think about what they most need to do to stop the downward spiral. A reminder to do the right things and an alert that their patterns suggest they might be in need of extra care could well be the stitch in time that saves nine.

Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#24

Post by anmol »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #20
moultano wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>60% really means very little if it's a binary choice - flu or no. You'll be right 50% of the times no mater what. What? Just because something is binary doesn't mean it happens half the time.

Hmm, yeah... good point on that. I'll leave my comment, but I take it back :)

With severely unbalanced classes, overall accuracy is not a good metric. So we use recall of the symptom class, and how it varies with the precision. Recall = 0.6 to 0.9. All results are based on cross-validation.

There is a lot more sophistication we can add (e.g. markov properties), these are almost first-order results.

Nonetheless important to validate with other populations. That would be a big part of testing any product.

Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#25

Post by anmol »

anmol wrote: post #22
SwellJoe wrote: post #21

At the direct-to-consumers level, think "I've fallen and I can't get up!" Automatic detection of illness and alerts for the old and infirm could be a potential market, though research on college students is not going to be at all effective for monitoring old people. And, if it can only detect trends rather than a specific individual situation, then it won't work in this context. As others mentioned, making it a stand…

The challenge with 'think I've fallen' is that you constantly have to ping the accelerometer. From a battery-life perspective, that kills the smartphone. Also, its hard to distinguish those pings from For that particular application, its better to use custom body-worn hardware (e.g. fitbit). Regarding spotting trends in face-to-face networks, we've done similar analysis political opinions during the 2008 election cam…

pings from device forgotten at home. sorry about typo.

Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#26

Post by anmol »

Mz wrote: post #23
anmol wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the kind words, and good luck to your family. We really do want to make this into a tool that can help people, if possible. My intuition is that being able to quantify and visualize 'quality-of-life' automatically, will help support diet and lifestyle changes. What kind of features/UI would you like to see in such a tool? Would it be better is this was generic (e.g. like Facebook), or something specificall…

What kind of features/UI would you like to see in such a tool? Would it be better is this was generic (e.g. like Facebook), or something specifically for patients with CF? The CF market per se is pretty small. I wouldn't look to customize it specifically for them. I also think that "good practices" generalize. If you can come up with some parameters that work well with vulnerable populations, it should work regardles…

Once we mockup our UI, would it be possible to have you give feedback / provide suggestions? Could you help us put together a user-trial with say 10-15 tech-savvy parents like you?

Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#27

Post by Mz »

anmol wrote: post #26
Mz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of features/UI would you like to see in such a tool? Would it be better is this was generic (e.g. like Facebook), or something specifically for patients with CF? The CF market per se is pretty small. I wouldn't look to customize it specifically for them. I also think that "good practices" generalize. If you can come up with some parameters that work well with vulnerable populations, it should work regardles…

Once we mockup our UI, would it be possible to have you give feedback / provide suggestions? Could you help us put together a user-trial with say 10-15 tech-savvy parents like you?

You can contact me via the email address on any of the websites in my profile. I belong to some health lists. I would want to ask the list-owners permission first, but I might be able to help you put together a trial. We can discuss more details via email.

Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#29

Post by mikesimonsen »

Anmol - you're building an information business. And at scale, IMHO, they're fabulous. Health information seems like a massive market, and this seems like unique data. (Think about financial consumers who care about health data in addition to the pharmas.) I'll assume your app scales so that you get critical mass of input, but once you have that in your sights, here's how we constructed our information business.

In my experience, the best information businesses are founded on a core of primary research - data that you find/generate that no one else has. Once you build that database, you build the products. You might be surprised, but here's what many information products look like - I'm a fan of doing it in this order:

1. A big honking CSV file of the primary data. For customers that have their own models, which your early adopters will likely have. Ours did.

2. A CSV file of derivative analytics (the output of your prediction tools perhaps?). For customers who want your algorithmic take on the underlying data.

3. Reports (manually written). People buy your analysis of the data. We found a majority of the potential market doesn't want Tools or data files (even if they're Wall Street "quants"). They just want answers - and by virtue of having the data, you're an instant expert. Reports have the nice benefit of being A) tangible B) easy to consume and C) subscribe-able (repeat revenue!) They have a bonus of being delicious chum for the media sharks.

4. Reports (automated, for scale). Subscribers get the latest insights each week, month, etc. Best not to automate until you see which of #3 are most popular.

5. Now come the technology Tools. #3 and #4 above will be excellent test beds for your prediction tools. Doing it in this order, you won't have to build any front end applications until you understand what predictions people pay for. One way to build a tools-based product line is to give the tech away for free and have the customer subscribe to the latest data.

You might also find that a great consumer-facing website is powerful for the information business. We don't have those skills in our company, but have found that when we pull it off even a little, institutional buyers begin as personal, individual consumers. A great consumer facing site/app is a perfect way to reach them.

rock on.

Re: Ask YC: This is our tech, how can we make this into a product that people want?

#30

Post by gojomo »

Seems like you have something that public health officials would want, and maybe mobile carriers, if the privacy issues can be solved and having it installed wins them some points with their regulators.

If you want to make something businesses want to pay for, see if the same predictive models work for forecasting product demand and other economic activity. What is the effect of a movie release on patterns of communication and movement? Can profiles be (semi-anonymously) correlated with other tweets/purchases, so you know that learning about a certain product, or buying it, changes behavior in some way?

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