Institute For The Future

In May, my colleague Bradley Kreit presented a keynote, A look into the Future: Citizens, Communities and Open Data, for the Healthy Communities Data Summit in San Francisco. The Summit successfully brought together private, public, and philanthropic organizations dedicated to innovation andopen data for the betterment of community health. 

Brad’s keynote focused on the emerging utility of big data in the coming decade of innovation and disruption. Big data can be viewed as a cumbersome and uncontrollable challenge, but focusing on the coming decade, we can see how this view will yield to a vision of abundant data, an opportunity to tap into data as needed and in context. The thing that I enjoyed about Brad’s keynote is that it brought together different components of the coming decade of innovation in the well-being economy. The artifacts and signals that Brad shared illustrate that we can contextualize the cumbersome data flows into meaningful visions and tools through better design and focusing on real problems of people. My three favorite signals that Brad shared tell a unique story about a challenge that we face today and solution that reaches from the future into the present:

• Asthmapolis—connects the episodic experience of asthma into a cohesive community narrative.
• Babybeat—allows parents to feel at ease about infants that are high risk fo SIDS
• Pulsepoint— channels the inner Good Samaritan of all us to create a unique community.

Signals allow us to see what kinds of innovation and disruption can happen within the uncertain future, they inform our research by directing our attention to probable shifts in the coming decade. Each one of these solutions connects the promise of big data to solve the challenges of real people. In the coming decade of open data, the opportunity to empower people and communities who are most challenged, or creating rallying points for those that can help, will be more meaningful than ever.