Crowdsource your health

You can use your smartphone to find a local ATM, but what if you need a defibrillator? At TEDxMaastricht, Lucien Engelen shows us online innovations that are changing the way we save lives, including a crowdsourced map of local AEDs.

I would like to talk to you
about why many ehealth projects fail.

And I really think
that the most important thing of it

is that we stopped listening to patients.

And one thing we did at Radboud University

is we appointed a Chief Listening Officer.

Not in a very scientific way --

she puts up a little cup
of coffee or a cup of tea

and asks patients, family, relatives,

"What's up?

How could we help you?"

And we think, we like to think,

that this is one of the major problems

why all -- maybe not all --

but most of the ehealth projects fail,

since we stopped listening.

This is my weight scale.

It's a very simple thing.
It's got one knob, on/off.

And every morning I hop on it.

And yes, I've got a challenge,

as you might see.

And I put my challenge on 95 kg.

But the thing is that
it's made this simple

that whenever I hop on,

it sends my data to Google Health as well.

And it's collected
by my general practitioner as well,

so he can see what's my problem in weight,

not on the very moment
that I need cardiologic support

or something like it,

but also looking backward.

But there's another thing.

As some of you might know,

I've got more than 4000
followers on Twitter.

So every morning, I hop on my weight scale

and before I'm in my car,

people start talking to me,

"I think you need
a light lunch today, Lucien."

(Laughter)

But that's the nicest thing
that could happen,

since this is peer pressure.

Peer pressure used to help patients --

since this could be used for obesity,

it could be used
to stop patients from smoking.

But on the other hand,

it also could be used
to get people out of their chairs

and try to work together
in some kind of gaming activity

to get more control of their health.

As of next week,
it will soon be available,

there will be this little
blood-pressure meter

connected to an iPhone
or something or other.

And people will be able, from their homes,

to take their blood pressure,

send it to their doctor

and eventually share it
with others, for instance,

for over a 100 dollars.

And this is the point
where patients get into position

and can collect,
not only their own control again,

be captain of their own ship,

but also can help us in health care

due to the challenges that we face,

like health-care cost explosion,

doubled demand and things like that,

make techniques that are easy to use

and start with this
to embrace patients in the team.

And you can do this
with techniques like this,

but also by crowdsourcing.

And one of the things we did,

that I would like to share with you
introduced by a little video.

(Music)

(Heart-beat)

We've all got
navigation controls in our car.

We maybe even have it in our cellphone.

We perfectly know where all the ATMs are,

just about the city of Maastricht.

The other thing is we know
where all the gas stations are.

And sure, we could find fast food chains.

But where would be the nearest AED
to help this patient?

We asked around, and nobody knew.

Nobody knew where
the nearest lifesaving AED

was to be obtained right now.

So what we did,
we crowdsourced the Netherlands.

We set up a website, and asked the crowd,

"If you see an AED, please submit it,

tell us where it is,
tell us when it's open,"

since sometimes in office hours
it's closed, of course.

And over 10,000 AEDs in the Netherlands

already have been submitted.

The next step we took
was to find the applications for it.

And we built an iPad application.

We made an application
for Layar: Augmented Reality,

to find these AEDs.

And whenever you are
in a city like Maastricht,

and somebody collapses,
you can use your iPhone,

and within the next weeks
also your Microsoft cellphone,

to find the nearest AED,

which can save lives.

And as of today,

we would like to introduce this,
not only as AED4EU,

which is what the product is called,

but also AED4US.

And we would like to start this
on a worldwide level.

And ask all of our colleagues
in the rest of the world,

colleague universities, to help us

to find and work and act like a hub

to crowdsource all these AEDs
all around the world,

that whenever you're on holiday
and somebody collapses,

might it be your own relative
or someone just in front of you,

you can find this.

The other thing we would like to ask

is of companies also all over the world

that will be able to help us
validate these AEDs.

These might be courier services

or cable guys, for instance,

just to see whether
the AED that is submitted

is still in place.

So please help us on this one

and try to make not only
health a little bit better,

but take control of it.

Thank you.

(Applause)