FiRe CTO Design Challenge: Working Session: The Challenge Continues – Creating the New Field of ‘Nutritional Microanalysis’: Inputs for the Quantified Self

Moderated by Larry Smarr, Director, Calit2, UCSD and Irvine; with David Brin, Author and Physicist; Ty Carlson, Architect for BPOS Engineering (R&D)/Office 365, Microsoft; William Harris, President and CEO, Science Foundation Arizona; Sridhar Jagannathan, VP, Technology Strategy and Partnerships, Office of the CTO, Intuit; Eric Openshaw, Vice Chairman and U.S. Technology Leader, Deloitte LLP, and Global Technology Sector Leader, Deloitte; Jerry Woodall, Founder, WoodallTech, and National Medal of Technology Laureate; André de Fusco, CEO and Director, Cynvenio Biosystems

Raise awareness of Metabolic Syndrome – starts and ends with nutrition/exercise

Most relevant and easiest to address by moving through three stages – learn basic nutrition by leveraging existing technology, lead technologies into the future by leveraging that understanding and reinforcing proper habits, extend technology and knowledge to give people the power to become nutritionally aware.

Technology should be developed that will increase the effectiveness of each stage and catalyze advancement from one stage to the next – sensors in cookware and dishware, coatings and sprays, crowdsourced web applications, QR codes and RFID nodes, and mobile “bolt-ons” can all work with cell phones and allow people to assess the nutritional value of food, the condition (spoiled or not) of food, and understand how certain foods fit within the desired diet.

Lucrative business opportunities exist if these developments can be elevated out of the lab and into an ecosystem.  As the platform grows, the incentive to develop technologies increases – positively impacting the economy and our health.  This incentive could be money or notoriety and, as the ecosystem grows, more business “whitespace” will become evident.