Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

We have been tracking social networks and services growing around location for a while, and now professionals in other industries are also beginning to seriously contemplate useful geo-applications. In this TED talk, Bill Davenhall discusses how mobile devices can be used for what he calls "geo-medicine."

Think about what your physician asks when you're sitting in his or her office. Usually you end up answering a lot of yes or no questions about your medical history. The purpose of this is to try and recognize patterns that might lead to explanations of your current or possible upcoming health condition.

One piece of the puzzle that Davenhall accuses the health-care industry of sometime ignoring is location. There are half a dozen programs around the world mapping out reported medical conditions according to geography. It isn't hard to imagine that living in a city like Los Angeles could be harder on the lungs. These maps pinpoint by specific issues, acute myocardial infarction for example.

So how does this connect to mobile technology? One man, using his mobile phone, tracked everywhere he went, constantly updating every two hours to generate a visual map of where he went. Connecting this data with medical data, or a map of toxic release inventories by the EPA, he was able to visualize and draw conclusions on how his location affected his health.

While some are skeptical about the application of networks like Brightkite and Loopt, if done right, they could provide this data for serious, and possibly life changing insights. Davenhall suggests that if he had this kind of information earlier, perhaps he would've made a different decision and moved somewhere other than Los Angeles. While some base moving decisions on the creative economy, others may see health as a priority.

For those checking in on Foursquare, visually mapping out your whereabouts is already possible with Where Do You Go. If we could connect our medical history to our Foursquare place history, we would have a poor man's geo-medicine.