The wellbeing of ‘cityzens’ is dependent on individuals taking a greater responsibility for being active. Running in the parks or workout sessions at the gym are common in urban areas but what will we demand in the form of measurement when these activities move beyond the fitness freaks and become mainstream in the city?
The ability to measure and track physical exercise is widespread among the most fitness-aware parts of the population. These practitioners track their workouts and running sessions with dedicated devices. They upload results and compare with friends with defined goals and targets. They move in to the exercise, get the job done and move out to their next mission.
There is a potential to leverage our daily movements and open up for the broader population to embrace measuring fitness and their personal lifestyle. By measuring our daily walks we might step off the bus one stop earlier on a good day and add a healthy 5-minute walk. We might select the stairs instead of elevators as we move around in the office. And we might choose restaurants further away to get in a healthy micro-lunch walk. Smart wearables with applications in our smartphones might support this development.
In many physically intensive professions, it is not so much about adding movement as it is about preventing unnecessary ones, or rather to track the intensity of the really hard ones. Location information and connectivity for instant access to employee’s wellbeing is emerging across many sectors. All of these factors is enabling a more health-aware lifestyle where we can measure and improve all areas where we would like to drive personal change.
My predictions for the future of preventive healthcare in cities are:
– Measuring and monitoring physical activities will move from fitness freaks to mainstream for all ‘cityzens’
– Dedicated devices will be complemented by wearables and applications coupled to smartphones
– Data will be stored in the cloud and automatically uploaded without manual intervention.
Networked Society Insights 