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In the late 1980s, the American Heart Association launched a “Know Your Number” campaign, encouraging everyone to track the three figures measuring their blood cholesterol levels. At the time it was a radical idea — taking information previously germane only to researchers and physicians, and asking the general public not only to understand it but to adjust how they ate and exercised accordingly.
Twenty-five years later, the idea of knowing our numbers, of using personal data to track and improve our health, isn’t just widespread; it’s a flat-out fad. There is a booming industry of apps and gadgets that let people monitor innumerable aspects of their health, from how many bites they take to how many steps they walk. If there’s something you do, or something you want to do, there’s probably an app that’ll track it for you — and nudge you to do it a little better.
These tracking tools are just the most visible demonstration of the digital revolution that has shaken up medicine and health care. From athletics to genetics, data has utterly transformed how we optimize our health and recover from illness. It has changed the way research is done and how drugs are developed. It has opened the door to a new understanding of human behavior, and it is giving people new ways to accomplish the hardest possible task: stopping bad habits and starting better ones.
Wired has been chronicling this revolution closely and passionately as it happens. In 2009 we dubbed it Living by Numbers, and that phrase still captures how the seemingly simple act of engaging with data can radically change lives. Our new e-book collects Wired's best writing about the topic to show how this movement has grown and blossomed, and where it's heading.
Today, medicine isn’t just about knowing your numbers. It’s about knowing what to do with them. These stories will show you how.
Living By Numbers is available through the Wired app in the iTunes Store. It's free to magazine subscribers, or $2.99 for the collection.
Living By Numbers is also available through the Wired app on the Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook, also free to subscribers, and $2.99 for the collection.
