Welcome to my life - open sourced
“The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself...that is the moment, you might be starting to get it right.” - Neil Gaiman
Here I am. Every facet of my biology, up for display, for the whole world to see. My vital signs. My blood tests. Even the contents of my DNA.
Why am I doing this?
I recently had the displeasure of switching doctors/dentists a couple of times recently due to moving and searching for a new one in my new city. It has been -surprisingly- cumbersome to get my records from my previous physicians to my current ones. Email? Attachment's too big. Snail mail? 25 cents a page. Dropbox? Yeah right. Even when I offered to physically bring a USB drive to my previous dentist to take my X-rays to my current dentist, I was told I had to pay $30 for any transfer of records to a patient. To another physician, of course, it's free. But damn near impossible.
This is ridiculous.
Being a computer scientist, I immediately thought - why not have some central storage where all medical records are kept? You could throw it all on the cloud and patients as well as physicans could all access it, easily and securely. Also, those patients who don't mind can volunteer their data to scientific studies. This could help researchers find patterns and drug targets like never before. Turns out, I wasn't the first person to think of this; Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health both tried. And failed. Upon further research, it turns out that there were severe adoption issues and concerns over privacy were abound.
This is even more ridiculous.
I completely understand the potential problems with such a system. But I also see the massive benefit from having one. Benefits that completely outweigh any drawbacks, especially when precautions are taken and adoption is at a proper rate.
Me? I'm not waiting any longer. Here is all of my data, publically available for everyone to see. I want to show the world that this data need not be as secret as some people think. What's the worst that can happen?
Who am I?
My name is Jonny and I am a computer scientist and biohacker. Biohacking is the art of managing one's biology and brain using nutrition, exercise, drugs, and technology. One might ask how this is different than what most people do. What most people do is they wait until they have a problem. They wait until they have a cold, and then they buy the Nyquil. They wait until something unexpected happens, and visit the doctor to see if "anything is wrong". They expect everything to be fine as long as they dont have any symptoms. The problem with this approach is that, many of these problems could have been prevented. And sometimes when the symptoms roll around, it's too late. Long term damage has been done. Why not actively monitor yourself and adjust the many compounding factors that contribute to health and mental well-being? That is my goal, and the results of my efforts will be here for you to see. Eventually, this site will be updated in real-time, with sensors all over my body.