An Olympic Win-Win: Athletes provide personal data in health tracker beta testing

by Lauren Welles on August 1, 2012

Olympic Track Cycling

Olympic Track Cycling

 

Olympic athletes have agreed to become beta testers for a number of technology companies focusing on health and fitness.  Volunteers will allow the trackers to collect their exercise, nutrition, and sleep data for the duration of the Games.  Members of the US track cycling team, for example, have agreed to wear glucose trackers and sleep monitors that report on nutritional needs and muscular capacity.

Companies like DexCom and Zeo, which manufacture health tracking devices, and Optimized Athlete, a startup that analyzes patterns in personal health data, are taking advantage of the golden opportunity.  Stakeholders hope to collect a wealth of high-quality data from, in theory, the best test subjects in the world for their devices.  Olympic testing will provide insights that inform the reengineering of these gadgets and ultimately help position them for success on the market.  As the Financial Times pointed out, perfect compliance with the study will lead to perfect data.  What more could a marketer want?

This is exactly the type of value exchange that marketers should be building into data-driven products, during beta testing and beyond.  It’s a true value exchange: the marketer collects data that teaches him about his consumer and how to improve his product, and the user receives personalized information on how to be better.

In the Olympics arrangement, each participant has access to continuous information on his nutrition, the quality of his sleep, and essentially the performance potential of his body.  The athletes (users) provide their personal data and in return receive pattern analyses that educate them on how best to eat, sleep, and optimize performance in their events.  The device manufacturers (marketers) will walk away with top-tier research that will allow them to perfect their products.

In the long term, we (the consumers without Olympic-caliber athletic prowess) stand to benefit from the intelligence gathered at the 2012 Games.  What was once raw data—such as depth of sleep or daily intake of glucose—will be applied to teach us as individuals more about our bodies’ unique needs.  How do you think you stand to benefit most from this research?

Lauren Welles

About Lauren Welles

Lauren is the Marketing Manager at Qnary. Her background is in social media-based strategy and marketing research. She has experience analyzing data to identify trends and generate actionable insights that inform clients in product and service innovation. At a social media marketing agency, she helped build campaigns and optimize brand presences in social media. She has worked with brands across industries, including Vanguard, General Motors, adidas, and Hertz.

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Tagged as: DexCom, London 2012, Olympics, Optimized Athlete, Personal health data, Sports, Zeo

  • http://piloseo.com Mark Pilatowski

    I think one of the most important pieces of this article is that the “athletes agreed” to allow their data to be gathered and can use it to benefit themselves. This is what is missing when we talk about big data. Generally the conversation about data collection is focused on how businesses can use it to better target individuals through their marketing efforts. The idea that data collection and analysis can also benefit individuals tends to be ignored. Rather than be scared about data collection individuals should strive to learn more about what’s going on and use that to their advantage, just like the athletes in this case are doing

    • Doug Read

      Yes the area of self quantification is very interesting. Privacy is another issue that is generally ignored.

    • Doug Read

      Yes the area of self quantification is very interesting, even better if someone collects it for you and hands it over. Don’t forget about privacy who gets to look at this data and why, other teams?

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