In today’s interview I get to speak with founder & CEO of Heads Up Health, David Korsunsky.
We talk about the best ways to use their software and bring all of your health, fitness and medical records into one place to be able to track your health trends and progress.
With advances in technology and increasing availability of wearable devices that allow users to measure and track various aspects of their health, it can be challenging to make sense of all the data.
How do you pull out the most important bits and how is it all connected?
We get a chance to talk about how Heads Up Health integrates all the self-collected data from health tracking devices along with the blood lab test and other medical information to give us a fuller picture.
Bringing together all this information can help uncover trends, insights and correlations that tend to get lost otherwise.
If you know someone who is interested in learning more about:
- How they can better track and manage all their medical, lifestyle and health information from one point using a simple software solution
- Review of how does Head Up Health work
Then this interview is for them.
I enjoyed this interview with David as he shared a great option for how to keep track of what is going on with anyones health; short and long-term.
The software integrates with some of the commonly used apps and devices (and they are constantly adding more), including the Oura ring, Fitbit, Garmin watch and other devices that I use myself.
It is an ideal solution, to combine all these measurements in one place!
Special thanks to David for joining me on the show.
Enjoy the episode!
Go to the Heads Up Health website here and enter the coupon code “BIOHACKERSLAB20”, without the quotation marks.
You will get the discounted price off the RRP price at checkout.
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Speaker Links
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Show Notes with Timestamp Links
Find summarised highlights of what we talk about during the interview.
Use the clickable timestamp links to jump direct to those points in the audio file below:
[00:00] – Until the beginning of November 2018, you can get a 20% discount at Heads Up Health by entering the code BIOHACKERSLAB at checkout.
[00:38] – Introducing, David Korsunsky, the founder and CEO of Heads Up Health, the software that allows you to have a central space to manage and explore your medical and health tracking technology data. As an avid health enthusiast with over 15 years of experience working for industry leading tech firms like VMware, he recognized an opportunity to build a software solution that makes it easier for anyone to take control over their health through better use of their data.
[01:22] – What was the initial problem David was trying to solve when he came up with Heads Up Health? He explains how his interest in quantified-self technology grew. He noticed however, none of the devices were connected. After his own health challenges saw him taking all his health records and building a spreadsheet, he saw the immense advantages of having all the data in one place.
[05:50] – The blood test data from the doctor were integrated into the software next to the lifestyle changes which can be quantified by integrated apps and devices such as the Oura ring, MyFitnessPal, Elite HRV as well as a supplement protocol. David explains how in the US the software can sync to the blood test data electronically, outside the US, however, it needs to be entered manually using a simple process. (Biohackers Lab tip: Get a new Oura ring with a discount here.)
[08:25] – Not every Dr and lab use the same formats for lab results. David explains how the software deals with different formats and test names behind the scenes to give us a clean graph.
[09:27] – David does a screenshare of the dashboard and walks us through some of the measurements we can track. He also talks about some of the devices the software can sync up with, such as MyFitnessPal, MyMacros+, Fitbit and the Oura ring; with more coming up including the Cronometer and KetoMojo which will be releasing a Bluetooth connector to enable upload of their data to the software. You can see all of this in the YouTube video of the interview.
[14:27] – When someone signs up for the Heads Up Health they get access to all the information available from the synced up apps and devices. The dashboard is also customizable to suit the individual; David shows us how we can easily move things around and set things up so it’s easy to read.
[17:04] – There is also the option to enter data manually; people don’t have to buy the connected devices. Are there differences between using the Withings, Tanita and DEXA measuring scales?
[19:51] – After being on the standard American diet, David explains how he discovered the ketogenic diet (the Bulletproof diet) and had some good results. He shares his weight readings over two years since he started and how nutritional ketosis affected the results.
[24:01] – The software is able to pull all the old data from the source backtracking the readings to the date of the first recordings. While the units are American format, it is possible go in to the program and change the units and the reference ranges.
[25:58] – It is important to look at the trends your data is showing over a lifetime as your doctor does not do this. The answers to disease are in these patterns.
[26:42] – On-screen, we can now see panels showing us numbers and different metrics, but we can also put this information into a graph. David explains a lot of users also take this information to their doctor.
[28:05] – There is also a feature called the Care Team Access that you can use to give access to other people who have a Heads Up Health account. You can use this to give access to loved ones and different health care professionals you are working with; you can disconnect them at any time.
[30:18] – Updates to apps and devices such as the Oura ring automatically sync up; as soon as the information is available on the Oura cloud, for example, it is available on the Heads Up Health software also.
[31:09] – David explains that they have integration with Apple Health and are working on an update, so they can sync everything as not all metrics are supported yet. On the YouTube video he shows us how it works.
[32:14] – The dashboard can be used on the desktop and a mobile dashboard, where you can check your data and enter readings on the go, is available on the tablet and phone. However, the medical records, comparing and graphing data still need to be done on desktop; the next thing they will be releasing on mobile is the medical records.
[33:01] – David illustrates how you can attach notes to any reading (see video) and make general notes, too, using the journal function. There are some interesting examples of people figuring out what causes health events by seeing a correlation.
[35:49] – The system allows us to overlay different information and look for patterns. In the future, the aim at Heads Up Health is to build their machine learning capabilities so that it will be able to detect this type of information automatically and alert people.
[36:57] – The final piece is genetic information. They will be integrating with Nutrition Genome next. David explains the problem with 23andMe stopped exposing a lot of the vital information that need to be analysed.
[38:03] – The genetic information informs us in terms of what lifestyle changes we need to make to see the results in our blood work. David explains a lot of people go on diets they shouldn’t be on based on their genetics and why they avoid making any generalisations in terms of health recommendations, focusing instead on hard data.
[40:30] – It is an exciting time where we now have access to genetics, blood tests and lifestyle data available to help us (with a help of a good doctor) to figure things out.
[41:01] – The software is available for everyone to try for 30 days for free, on the Heads Up Health website. After that it is $59/year. New integrations are added all the time. The mobile app is in beta with an August launch planned.
