All the data we can gather about a person can be used to create a map on the progression of debilitating diseases.
How do we get genes to mutate for a positive benefit? How do we use machines to splice proteins and work on genetics? How can we improve our quality of life by removing the things that debilitate us, at the source code level?
While we don’t have the answers to these questions just yet, we do have the data and resources to start searching now. We need to create a world where genetic engineering is a possibility for the people who need it the most. Unfortunately, our data isn’t being utilized for these pursuits.
Your healthcare data is priceless and the fact that other companies are making you pay to submit it is absurd.
Imagine what you can do with your genome data if it’s in the right hands. Instead of being used for a one-time service, your personal information can be a part of research trials for the cure to cancer.
Aside from that, these companies are taking your money and your data, turning around, and using it for their own profit. For example, you pay $99 or $149, whatever the amount is, to get a DNA swab done. Those companies are turning around and using your data to generate 6-digit, or even 7-digit profits.
In our current economic system, we’re letting the bigwigs get away with putting profit before people. And it’s time that we change how it works, while it’s not too late.
Even when scientists do make progress in the medical field, the effects are not always felt immediately. This is because we may not have adjusted our social infrastructures to accommodate these new technologies.
One example is crime and justice from the 1980s to the 1990s. Since all the information on a certain location’s serial killers and murders existed in data silos, these criminals were free to just skip town once they started getting attention.
Data shouldn’t be someone else’s cash cow. It’s a reflection of who we are—our habits, preferences, and individual history.
TARTLE was created to allow people to share their data and earn from their hard work. You are free to choose how much information you put up for sale, and who gets to buy them from you. At every step of the process, you are in charge.
This is a stark difference from what you experience from big tech and genetics companies. We bet you never knew you could earn from the data you were giving them. It’s time to change how things operate.
What’s your data worth? Sign up for the TARTLE Marketplace through this link here.
Food is a global issue. Once upon a not very long time ago, food was largely regional. If the weather was favorable in your area, you and others grew plenty of food for your family and for the surrounding area. If it rained too little or too much, you were probably looking at a pretty rough winter. The next region over though was largely unaffected. Or if you wanted strawberries in March, you were probably just going to have to wait a couple of months until they were in season again. Now, you can get pretty much any food you want any time you want it. Basically, strawberries are in season somewhere and the food supply chain is robust enough to get them from there to your corner grocery store. Corn grown in Iowa goes all over the world, same with rice in China. Your last Big Mac might have come from a cow raised in Brazil. In a lot of ways, this is a great thing. Despite there being many more people on the planet than there were when food was local, more of them are fed.
However, it also comes with a couple of downsides, the biggest of which being that the food supply chain is vulnerable. Now, if the weather or something else disrupts the crops in one area, it doesn’t just affect that area, the whole world can quickly find itself short on corn, meaning many go hungry and the prices for everyone else get higher.
For a year now, COVID and the response to it has put unprecedented strain on our food supply, leading to issues from the local small town to far off villages. The response to COVID led to the shutdown of course of pretty much every restaurant in the country, except for takeout, led to the total disruption of the supply chain. Since people weren’t going out to eat as much, they turned to the grocery stores, which put so much strain on them that even Costco and Sam’s Club had limits on how much of certain items could be purchased, if they were there at all. It’s not that there wasn’t food, it’s that there are multiple food supply chains and it proved impossible to redirect the resources from the restaurant supply chain to the grocery stores. As a result, literally tons of food were wasted. Fortunately the system adjusted in a couple months and most people were only inconvenienced (that’s to say nothing of the unemployed who were relying on food pantries, but that’s a separate issue). Yet, the situation did a lot to show that something as important as our food supply chain is a lot more fragile than most would have thought.
Climate issues raised fears of further disruption just months later when a massive storm ripped through the plain states, destroying millions of wheat crops. Again, we seem to have gotten lucky with how the system has managed to respond and other than a price increase due to lower supply things seem to have remained stable. However, should we be faced with these things happening at the same time, we could be in real trouble. Imagine a pandemic as bad as we feared COVID would be, at the same time as a hurricane that decimates a couple important ports while a drought destroys crops out west. Does that sound far-fetched? Then you haven’t paid much attention last year. Any one of those types of events is happening somewhere in the world at any given point. All it would take is a flap of the butterfly’s wings to get them to line up a little differently.
How to weather such a series of unfortunate events? Right now, we can’t really say. Which is exactly why we need to come together and use our data and other resources to better understand the world we are living in. Only then can we hope to be prepared to handle major disruptions to the things we take for granted. It’s a simple choice, use our data to save and build a better world, or don’t use it, and hope we get lucky again.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
As most people are well aware by now, there are a number of COVID vaccines out in the wild now, with roughly a million people every day getting a shot from one of them. That’s quite the accomplishment given that a year ago today, many people believed any sort of vaccine was likely impossible, to say nothing of getting one by the end of 2020. Thanks to a lot of hard work and the clearing of administrative roadblocks made possible by Operation Warp Speed, we have not one, not two, but actually four out there getting distributed.
While the development of so many new vaccines in so short a time is impressive, another daunting task is to actually manage all the data related to the distribution of those vaccines. Which groups should get it first? Who has had it and who still needs it? Who has had one shot and who has had two? What sort of side effects might arise after taking the shot? All of these are important data points to keep track of. The CDC in Atlanta recognized this and set about ensuring that a system was developed that would be capable of managing it all effectively. At least, that’s what they hoped would happen.
What actually happened is a debacle on par with the launch of HealthCare.gov. The CDC issued a no-bid contract to consulting firm Deloitte to develop the Vaccine Administration Management System (VAMS). $44 million dollars later and what the CDC got was not a stunning accomplishment in the world of software development but something that only those who remember Windows Vista could appreciate. Instead of seamlessly tracking appointments and available supplies and all the rest of it, VAMS randomly drops appointments, thinks you’re literally getting a needle in your arm when you aren’t even in the building, and randomly locks staff members out of the system. I don’t care who you are, that program is anything but a success.
While the CDC and Deloitte acknowledge that the system has a few bugs that need to be worked out, they point to user error as a cause. While that might technically be true in some cases, when your system does such a lousy job that a professional health director can’t figure it out after 24hrs of trying, that a 100 doses of vaccine got wasted because VAMS couldn’t keep track of them, and hordes of volunteers are needed to transfer information from paper to the actual system, the problem is in fact the system. Or to perhaps put it more succinctly, when the name of your super great software system becomes a curse word amongst healthcare staff, the system is definitely the issue.
It is so bad that many states are in fact reverting back to paper records because it’s more efficient. Others are going with a paid option rather than struggling with the ‘free’ VAMS system, or even using a patchwork of other systems such as Eventbrite – a system used to manage things like concerts – to keep track of appointments.
How on earth did this happen? How could we possibly have gotten here with a digital revolution going on around us? Part of the issue is that this was a no-bid contract. Anytime that happens, alarm bells should be going off. It usually means that there some backs getting scratched money going into accounts that has nothing to do with the actual contract. Another is that Deloitte is actually run by accountants, not software experts or healthcare professionals. They most likely outsourced it to whatever firm had the lowest bid, didn’t test it and then sent it off to the CDC knowing they would never be held accountable.
Some have pointed to Deloitte being a private enterprise as part of the issue. However, they really aren’t private. Given their obvious ties with the government and the fact they developed this product with no competition whatsoever, Deloitte is more like a quasi-Government agency akin to NASA. It is only a matter of time before a real private company, like TARTLE, which already has an efficient and easy to use system for sharing data worldwide, shows up and presents a solution that is workable and cost effective that will help save lives.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
Just recently a new report was released on the role of big data in healthcare. The report made projections for the next year on how data would be used to improve the efficiency of health care. Sounds great, right? Well, slow down. A closer look shows that this report, if it accurately reflects the way things will actually go over the next few years is nothing to celebrate.
First, they are projecting out to six years. What on earth actually makes them think that they can make solid projections about what healthcare will be like in six years? How anyone can make those kinds of claims in a post-COVID world boggles the mind.
Second, the projections are only about squeezing every last drop out of current processes and models. There is little talking about where things might be headed. Much of what the report talks about isn’t even all that innovative. When they are breathlessly talking up telemedicine as an important new development, you know something is wrong. To read this report you would never know that people have already been using video chat with ease for years.
Third, and most importantly, the report does nothing to talk about different ways to actually improve patient care. It’s all about trying to maximize the bottom line.
There are a lot of problems with that last point. No, not that they have to make money. We get the necessity for that. However, it becomes a problem when making money becomes the primary focus, when making a profit isn’t enough. When profit becomes the main focus, it has do more than be steady, it has to exponentially increase. What’s really strange about that is it certainly doesn’t help people improve their lives and it’s possible that it winds up costing people money in the long run. How could that be?
Modern medicine follows a reactive model. That is, it waits for you to get sick or injured and then charges you a ton of money to put you back together. This model definitely brings in a ton of cash, but what if healthcare returned to a preventative model? One based on check-ups and solid advice meant to keep you from getting sick in the first place?
Now, in this model, you would go, get a physical, a stress test, and a bit of blood work done. You’d see if you have any leading indicators of problems like diabetes or cancer, or even simple vitamin deficiencies that could lead to problems down the road if not addressed. The doctor would give you a prescription for some heavy duty vitamins (yes, it turns out that prescription grade vitamins are a thing) and some diet and exercise recommendations and if you followed them, your health would improve.
Obviously, this model means that hospitals are losing out on some of the massive waves of money that come from treating significant illnesses. But would they really be out anything in the long run? After all, if you are trying to avoid getting sick, you might actually see your doctor more for regular checkups instead of waiting for an emergency. That, plus a few scans and the handful of necessary prescriptions (especially as you get older) could wind up creating a more steady revenue for the hospital, especially since with improvements in medical care people would actually be living longer as well, meaning another ten or twenty years of doctor visits instead of dying at an unnecessarily early age from a disease that could have been prevented.
TARTLE is eager to help with this. By partnering with medical providers and researchers, we help them get to the source data, to you, so they can see the whole picture regarding your health and learn why you have the problems you do, or why you don’t have any. In this way, they can gain a better understanding not just of your health but of health overall. By working with TARTLE, you and various medical companies will be able help not just improve the bottom line but the quality of healthcare for all.
What’s your data worth?
