How health wearables can be more useful for more people
Wearable health monitors have been a game-changer for diabetics and pro athletes — but January AI CEO Noosheen Hashemi thinks AI could revolutionize personal health for an even wider group of Americans.
January AI is an app that works on its own or paired with a continuous blood glucose monitor (CGM) to help people understand how diet and exercise impact their metabolic levels. It’s currently used by both people with diabetes and elite athletes. But CEO Noosheen Hashemi notes that a large percentage of people with diabetes and pre-diabetes are undiagnosed. She says there is a lengthy lag between what we know in a lab and what becomes the standard of care, and that apps like this will help more people avoid future problems or need treatment.
Matt Carmichael: What is the power of wearables plus AI?
Noosheen Hashemi: The beauty of wearables and continuous tracking is that you can machine learn on this data. If you were to take your blood pressure once a day, it could be different at various times of the day. But with continuous monitoring, we would be able to see patterns in that data instead of single points of data. Now, AI is different than data science. Data science is being able to see patterns, but with AI you can model. AI equals predictions. AI can also do counterfactuals: “This happened, but what if we had made this happen?” The power of prediction can be deployed in counterfactual situations for things that didn't happen.
Carmichael: CGMs are used by a bifurcated audience: those with diabetes and elite athletes.
Hashemi: Yes, these technologies are now able to be used by a variety of people for a variety of reasons. I wish they were more prevalent. I wish 100,000,000 people would throw on a CGM, but it's too expensive.
Carmichael: What would benefit other users?
Hashemi: We don't know who's sick and who's not. 136 million people have diabetes and pre-diabetes. Over 80% of people who have pre-diabetes and 23% of people with diabetes are not diagnosed.
Carmichael: What if you’ve gotten your glucose levels under control?
Hashemi: Well, you've stressed the hell out of your system if you had an A1C of 7.5 or 8.0 [6.5 indicates diabetes] at some point. The fact that you've lost a lot of weight, you've reduced that stress, but that doesn't mean you’re out of the woods completely. You have to maintain. We believe that everyone needs to advocate for their own health. There are a multitude of ways that they can do that, like a blood test or wearables to see how they're doing. There are no silver bullet answers to knowing exactly what's wrong with your blood sugar.
“These technologies are now able to be used by a variety of people for a variety of reasons. I wish they were more prevalent. I wish 100,000,000 people would throw on a CGM, but it’s too expensive.”
Carmichael: How do you encourage people to keep their relationship with these metrics healthy?
Hashemi: If you use a CGM and lose weight, is it possible? Sure, yeah. If I force you to never have a glucose spike over 110, you will lose weight because I'm forcing you to eat no carbs. But is that healthy? That is a terrible idea. I think marketing is a real problem. People take something out of context and use it for something that wasn't meant to be used for.
Carmichael: In your marketing, you use terms like “metabolic health” and “lifestyle-related diseases,” but not “obesity” or “diet.” How important is the language you use for changing how people view health?
Hashemi: It's very important. We feel that there is a huge stigma in this society around type 2 diabetes. With type 1 diabetes there's greater empathy because people are born with that condition. But there seems to be a huge stigma around type 2 diabetes, that it's your fault, which is a horrible thing. And that shouldn't be the case.
Carmichael: How can an app like January AI, coupled with wearables or on its own, help you get and stay healthy?
Hashemi: We think health is your own journey of self-advocating, learning about yourself, experimenting and finding what works for you. There are just six or seven healthy habits in life that would make you super healthy. But a lot of people have adopted those because a) they don't know necessarily what those habits are, and b) they don't really have the support system to gain competency in them.
Carmichael: And can these tools help people keep up with their wellness goals?
Hashemi: You have to stick with it. You need some agency. You need to decide you want to be healthy. These tools don't have any magical power over you, the way that social media does.
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