So, I know you probably came out to find a came here to find out if I'm normal or maybe if you're normal, or maybe learn about some of the technologies, that might help you figure this out but, we're not going to do that at least not now. First. I'm, going to give a different talk I'm, going to give a mini, Metta inaugural, lecture and. I'll. Tell you why that is. Now. The, the real issue was, I wanted, to give I wanted to to. Tell. All my friends at home when the Dean called me the executive Dean Josie Frazier called me and said you, know congratulations. We're. Giving you a personal chair and I. Was so excited I called people haven't said look the deans is called I've been given a personal chair and they. Said. Yeah. So. It's. You know I did do, people do you have standing desks or something they didn't they didn't get it I said no no no I've been made a professor, and again, they said so, what you mean you've been at university 25 years everyone. Who teaches in universities is a professor on things because in North America you, just call everyone who shows up in front of lecture hall professor, there's. A bit of difference in terminology, so. That. Didn't go down very well so then I went on and said we'll look in the UK we do it differently you don't just get the pre-nominal. Professor, you get to have a title and you get to choose it yourself pretty, much. So. I went, started. Going through possibilities. For what my title could be and. As. You've heard I'm doing work in people, measuring things about themselves the field is called the, quantified self it, was it's. Been sort. Of a bit of a cult for a number of years and now becoming a mainstream so. We thought we might do professor of the quantified self see. How that went down however, that. Was a bit off the wall so, we thought we might use one of the more conventional terms, lifelogging. So it could be professor of life logging. But. In, my user testing, that didn't, go down so well either so, the more conventional one was professor role of wearable, computing because obviously, you're wearing lots of the stuff or. Maybe professor of digital health and, then, we started just adding words on it started going a bit mad. And then it got too long because it wouldn't fit on a business card, and. It. Became, to get just get a bit out of hand, finally. Because of the cybersecurity aspects, of all this we thought this one might go down and. It. Actually occurred to me professor, Huffington I know we're doing the cybersecurity, lectureship. Professorship. Recruiting. We, could actually put this as a possible, title, for that to encourage the right candidates. Then, we were left with the title that all my colleagues call, me because of the research I've been doing and. This is what the sign on my desk actually says right now. But. In the end I went for the, sage counsel, of a long term mentor, professor. Marion Petri who was, also my best man at my wedding and, if, you want if he makes it here in time she's had a funding panel, right now but she makes it here then you can ask her over the cross dressing oh you're there Mary, yes. You can ask her about the cross-dressing theme at our wedding. Anyway. So we went with the more, conventional, professor. Of computing, so thank you Mary Ann for making me see sense. So. After I explained this to my friends they. Said I said, well at least you can come to my inaugural lecture and. They. Said well, what do you mean I said, you know this, is an inaugural lecture I said haven't you been giving lectures, for a quarter century. We. Don't do that here. So, I then, started realizing, I had to explain, to them what, an inaugural lecture was and I. Ended up doing a bit of research on this because when I came to the UK I didn't, know what inaugural lecture was, so. I'm. Going to give you a mini Met inaugural, lecture so. It, seems to be a uniquely, British, thing or at least Commonwealth. Ish some of the Commonwealth, countries still adopt it Canada. Mostly doesn't because they follow the American model and. It. Varies from place to place but. It seems to be a kind, of indulgence. Given to newly. Appointed chairs, and they. Can reflect, on some of the key aspects. In their career so, far, it. Can be used to thank the people who've helped them along the way and, and. I'm going to do that and the purple. Orange. Text is is.
To Remind me to say thank you so if you see someone's name in orange text that's me saying thank you and. I. Guess the final reason is might be the reason you've came here today which is to for me to share some of the exciting. Current research we're doing that, might actually be, relevant to you. So, back on the indulgences part I'm going to do, the bit of reflection on why, I, became, a computer scientist why I think I did I look, back on what influenced, me in my life and. I. Guess the first thing was I had a lot of support from family as, most. People do in this area but, there were two people I think who influenced. Me to. Become, a computer scientist computer science requires, you to do both engineering, and have a facility, with the Natural Sciences so. It was a nice combination for me I an interest in engineering probably. From my father who was a private pilot and he was always talking about flying and airplanes. And the technology, behind them and so that really inspired my interest in engineering and the. Other influence, on me I think was his brother my uncle who. Is a geologist. He's he's still a practicing geologist, the age of 84, and he was always talking to the family about the, Natural Sciences and inspiring, us about. What the latest thing he learned or the latest thing he'd he'd seen that we thought we should know about so. The reason I'm telling you this aside from telling you the background is that. For, those of you who have influence. Over children as parents aunts uncles grandparents. I want, to encourage you to, to. Basically inspire, them whenever you can not, because I think it's a good idea I think you should do it out of benign self-interest. Because. We're. An aging population the. NHS, doesn't have the resources to to. Support us if, you want to have a happy. And restful, old-age you're, gonna need to have a lot more scientists, and engineers helping, out so, please, do encourage, your children and an, nieces, and nephews and grandchildren to. Study the. STEM subjects, and also. To think about the Open University as, well. So, how did I end up in the UK well I didn't, know what Mark was gonna say so you're gonna get a quick. Tour of that because. He's. Talking, about a bit a bit of this already so, in 1991, I was doing my PhD at, the University of Toronto. In an area called software visualization. At that time it was a niche area not, many people working the area mark was desperate, to find a postdoc, to. To work in the area for a grant and he, couldn't find one so. He came to my then supervisor, professor. Ron Becker. Saying. Have you got a postdoc, he said no but I've got Blaine he's first year in his ph.d but he's he'll be great you can do it you can have him for a year then you've got to send him back. I'll. Just mention Ron, Becker will be watching I think on the on the live stream from Canada. Ron is also still a practicing scientist. At the age of 75, and he's got a new book coming up next year which is gonna explain to us why machine. Learning is gonna make a huge difference for everyone so I encourage you to go and look for that next year. But. Ron came to me and said I've got this job for you at a place called the Open University and. In. Common with I think most other people in North America who weren't in education, I had never heard of it and, he said it's in the city called Milton Keynes and, again. In common with I think most people in the rest of the planet outside the UK I'd never heard of it. What. I did hear is you can have a paid holiday in England while working on your PhD. So. Off I went for a one year job as Mark said and in.
The Early days at the OU you as, Mark said I arrived at the human cognition research lab and this, was an artificial intelligence, lab based in the psychology, department at. The time and I, was there with mark and two. Other people in the audience here we've got john. De mang where are you John where are you there's, John and Enrico. Mattei and. Didn't rico make it okay. No he didn't no he's not well okay. Well anyway this. Is what Mark looked like back then and you can, see the state-of-the-art, Macintosh, computer. There's. John he, also had a bit more hair as, did. On Rico and. Some. Of us had a lot more hair then. So. Actually, when I arrived I also had a goatee, beard which was equally, unfashionable. But, thanks, to the fact that it was pre digital technology, I've managed to destroy, all evidence that's, ever existed, so. Nowadays no one can do that. Anyway. So when we got there we mostly did work on software visualization, for the first year and John. And I co edited this book it. Says copy still available it's out of print but it's a it's still a widely cited book in the area so, um that. Was that was all very exciting, I. Lobbied. For the o you to be connected to the internet because when I arrived here I was quite surprised, the o you in common with most UK universities, was not connected to the internet there was a tiny. Academic, network that was unconnected, to the rest of the world and as. Mark said I built the first I built the first web server and, after. About three years of a one-year contract it, was definitely time to go back into Canada and, get, back to my PhD, where Ron Becker was patiently, waiting for me. However. There. Was a job advert. For a temporary, lecturer in computing. And. My colleagues, Mark and John and Enrico all said well it's, a it's a well-known thing that internal applicants are interviewed as a courtesy even though you do have a chance of getting this job just, apply, because. The, interview experience will be great and then when you have the real interview later on when you finish a PhD that'll be that would be really useful for you so.
I Went to the interview and to. Everyone supply surprise including mine I got the job. But. It was only a three-year temporary, contract, so, I thought I can do another three years in the UK I've learned how it works now it'll, be much easier. So. In the first year I went to my, Dean Pete Thomas and I. Said this internet thing is really important we're really going to have to look, at changing, practices, in the öyou because. We had at, that time every assignment came in by post so. The tutors would receive them by post they would post them to the o you they. Come in at 50,000, a week to a building just next to this one where, clerks, would open envelopes. Key, and data put them in other envelopes, post them back out and it was a huge industry I believe the öyou was one of the royal mail's biggest, customers. Time, so. With this money we formed a small team and some. Of these people are are also here today. Marian of course. Linda, price. Barbara Poniatowski Mike Richards still tou and Pete. Thomas my Dean so, we we. Spent about two or three years and basically, in that time scaled, up from, an initial pilot to, showing large-scale. Internet. Teaching doing. Lectures. We, did assignment, handling we. Did automatic. Assessment, handling and this was well before it, was a mainstream, activity. Somehow. During. That period they decided to make me a permanent lecture which was the. Closest you could get to tenure that, for the benefit of North Americans Margaret. Thatcher abolished tenure but. This is the closest we get to it as a permanent contract. So. We. Did a lot of publications, of all of that that, stuff the internet teaching stuff it's it's still one of the most cited material, on that subject. But. A, number, of things happened after I after we finished that in 1997, the. First one is I got married to Linda who was who had come to the OU you to work on this project. Then. I got seconded, to KMI as Mike meant as Mark, mentioned, and. Then I returned back to computing, and we had a new research director, professor Bashar, new sabe and he. Introduced me to a new research, area of. Privacy, and together. We supervise my, first PhD student Kareem Adam and, at. The same time I met another long-standing. Colleague, Rocha Bandera, and three.
Of Us collaborated, on our first major, grant together called, prema. Privacy. Rights management for mobile applications. And this, was all about, the. Using your the newly. Popularized. Mobile, phone smart, phone not quite smart at that time to. Control your personal data as you were roaming about and Facebook. Was just becoming, popular and only available in university campuses at this time. So. We. Did a lot of work on privacy and then began introducing bits, of what, I call life logging to the work so. We were looking at how people recorded. Data about their lives. We, added we. Had oh so we have two other PhD students, at the time also doing. Important work we'll, cash yen Dragic did a lot of work on mobile privacy, with with, controlling your location, on your phone who got to see it and who didn't and developed. A new interface called privacy shake which. Isn't a dance it's a thing you do with your phone to turn the privacy on and off and Kathy Thomas also here tonight please, say hello to him afterward he did important work on privacy. Requirements. During, that time as Mark said I introduced, the first digital. Forensics module another. Student came along Ian Kennedy who's a part-time, student and just graduated, and did, important work on malware. Forensics. So. The work in life logging extended, a bit beyond the the person, at that point as Mark said I had a kind, of a hobby of. Energy. Monitoring, and using renewable energy. Monitoring. Solar power and an electric vehicles and that led us to another PhD, student, Jackie bourgeois, who also, completed, relatively, recently and, also. Working on the MK smart project with Enric LaMotta which some of you may know about. But. The real change happened, when a BBC horizon producer. Came to me and said I'd, like to do a film. Of some of your your, next study whatever it is on. Digital health and. So. We we. Were just about to start a study anyway and allowed, them to come and do filming of various segments and that, basically, was the start of people. Learning about my interest in digital health and the work taking off and. That leads us sort of neatly probably, to the lecture you came to see. Which. Is am. I normal. So. We'll. Begin with a bit of audience participation for. Those of you there are probably, enough people in the audience who've known me at least five years so. If you've know me at least five years or you're, at home on the, internet and you can use the hashtag to reply to this. What. Is your answer the question am i normal. I. See. Head shaking so okay. So, for those of you don't know me well I. Think, I'll give you a bit more information and then you can judge and we'll see how it goes from there so. As you heard I'm, married I actually, have four children the youngest is just about growing up and not, quite left home I'm, also a grandfather, recently, so I have one grandchild and I. Know what you're thinking he's far too young to be a grandfather and. You'd. Be right because, I'm only 53. So. That makes me middle-aged. Let's. See what else can I tell you so I'm I'm. About five foot ten that's a hundred, and seventy, seven centimeters, way. About thirteen half stone that's, 86 kilos or 180. Pounds if you're in North America and. Unfortunate, that gives me a body mass index of 27. Which, means that I am overweight. So. That, puts me there. So, according, to this. For. Some reason my. Pulse is. 110. But. My Oh to SATs are 98. So that's okay so obviously, I'm a bit nervous but anyway let's go over that bit so that's, fine what. Else can I tell you let's. See just. Try this. So. This, is my blood sugar. 3.9. And. Going. Low okay, so, that's. Not good. Hopefully. There's lots of food after this. What. Else so. I can tell you what I've been doing so my phone helpfully. Records things like that. So. I'll show you what it what it showed me from yesterday it, says I've got five thousand, steps, I've did a run of 4.6. Kilometers, I was. In the car commuting, for one hour in 27, minutes and I. Was at work for four hours, and 11 minutes. Okay. Vice-chancellor. Just, let me explain, so. The app the app just records when I'm in the Jenny Lee building I'm actually working lots, of other places like, the the, hospital that, I was at the hospital too so most, professors do work 18-hour.
Days I promise you. So. What else can I what else can I tell you well so, the the set of the passive sensors on my bed can tell you how long I slept you'll be able to read that probably but, it says 7 hours and 41 minutes of sleep, waking. Once. 31. Minutes of snoring, sorry. Linda. Bedroom. Average temperature, of even. I can't read that 19. Degrees humidity. 51, percent. Resting. Heart rate about, 52, while sleeping, most of the night so. That's not bad. What. Else is there so it, says here that my car drove 47, miles it used 8 kilowatt, hours of electricity. The. Home used 15 kilowatt hours of electricity, most. Of that came from the solar panels or the stored batteries so, it was mostly off-grid, or low carbon, and that, means that the entire day was very green I had, an average carbon, footprint, of less than 150, grams of carbon, dioxide per. Kilowatt, hour which is very low, now. That you've got all the data as. It falls in place, do. You think I'm normal. No. Everyone shake your head so like, the question am i normal, is is could be asking you two things of course am I crazy I mean I'm collecting all this data someone. Who does that must be crazy or I could be saying is the data normal I mean my blood Sugar's low my pulse is high you. Know should I be worried, and. You're. Right collecting, all spending time collecting the day it would be crazy except I didn't have to go through any effort at all or mostly no effort to get it it all came free. Or mostly, free from, apps on my phone or very cheap hardware, I didn't have to do very much the. Smartphone that you carry has so, many sensors, in its gyroscopes. Accelerometers compasses. Light meters GPS, and the, cost to you is nearly, zero. So. The. Question is if I'm not crazy for collecting, it and it's. Easy cheap to get the data then. Am. I normal well. We don't know because all we have are these one-off, measurements, and I'm. Sure lots of you have probably, worn an activity tracker at some point in your life or measured. Something or even just measured your weight and written it down and the problem is that single measurements, or short-term measurements, are almost useless you get no trend you don't know whether it's going up or down you, don't know whether it's, a sudden change or like me I'm probably nervous that's why my pulse is so high so, you, can't really tell so. You need to have something that lets you keep measuring and measuring. And measuring and ideally. Is no effort for you to measure because you want the data to be there when you need it and you don't know when you're gonna need it, so. I'll tell you a little story of when this was actually useful for me personally, and this, is actual real data I haven't made this one up so. I. Got. The probably, one of the first fitbit's in the UK I. Should mention other activity, trackers are available, probably, much cheaper and if you want to ask my opinion I'll tell you after the talk but.
Fitbit Were the first to come out and I managed to get one before they came to the UK and. So. I've been tracking my, activity level for seven years and, I. Always was. At least until. The. Early, part of this decade overweight. Not, quite obese but just you know generally a bit fat and, but. I was very active I would be go running all the time I thought you know there should be no reason for this I've been very active. But. What I did was I graph the data and. Discovered. That. Essentially. I was allergic to UK, winters. I thought. I did running but, I would essentially. In the winter when it's cold and wet, I would, wimp out I'd stay home or I'd maybe go, for shorter runs or whatever but the data was very clear those dips in the lines you see are the. Winter and they go up in the summer and then. The, weight would fluctuate I would. Complete, a phase so I would lose weight in the winter and gain weight in the lose. Weight in the summer and gain weight in the winter and, once I figured that out it, was quite simple I just bought the right clothing and I could run year-round and then, I basically at a steady activity level and a, nice low weight so. Except. For the last week or two when I being lots of cakes and that's why I think I'm overweight now but anyway so. What, is normal for you and. That's probably why you came to this talk, the. Idea that I'm trying to get across is that automatic, and long-term, collection, lets you find out what your normal is the. Whole so-called 10,000. Step rule is not it's, just a convenient, number your. Normal, is whatever whatever. You can measure and find it was normal for you if you want to then get, more active once, you know you're normal you can increase and and. You'll know you've you've, increased your your, activity, so, some of the interesting things you can do with this technology is, in. Addition to the long-term measurement is you, can measure your athletic progress if you happen to be a runner or in some other activity. You actually get the data and you can see how you're improving if you're not improving you can make changes. Other. Things that help some people is gamification so. Some. People broadcast. What they do to social media so their friends can encourage them or compare. Yourself with others and many. Of the apps the one that that I'm showing here is Strava lets. You compare yourself with completely, unknown people so you can run a route and completely. Strangers, who've run the same route you can compare yourself with them people the same age and and gender. And ability and then, you can do, fair comparisons, but the point is everyone, is motivated by different things you, need to find what motivates you. So. I know you're probably thinking that a lot of these things don't apply to you because you're not an athlete, you're. Active enough you're probably not too fat. Whatever. It's it's it may just be not for you but. Let me tell you about some of the ways we're using this technology now to make important. Changes in healthcare. One, of the ones that just about to finish is is one involving, joint. Replacement surgery so, as you may know as you age your joints begin to wear out and, they.
Become Quite painful and so much so that you you don't really want to move very much because every movement is painful and that leads to more health problems and so on so we've, been able to fix this for about, 50 years now with joint replacement, surgery so knees and hips are the most common ones, there. Are about a hundred and sixty thousand, done in the UK alone last year around, four hundred hospitals, doing them very. Routine. It's, quite major surgery, as you might imagine, but. Most. People feel, better afterwards. And they get the movement back and they get their life back, however, about one in five of, people, you have knee, replacement surgery, are still. In the same amount of pain a year later so for one in five people it's not very effective hip. Surgery, it's. A bit lower but it's still not a hundred percent so. What. We want do is find out what what, makes the difference in people recovering from this kind of surgery because. We actually don't know if you went and had joint replacement, surgery now your surgeon, depending, on who or she who he or she is will tell you something, completely different from the next surgeon there's. No evidence and that's. What we're trying to figure out so, we've been running a two-year project with, Milton Keynes Hospital, and we've. Been working with all. The pearce orthopedic, surgeon who is here tonight. Somewhere. Where is he, yes. On the back okay, so. We've. Been doing a two-year project we've been monitoring, people who have had total knee replacement, surgery our. 35th. Patient, is going to have her surgery on Tuesday. The, last one and. What we're doing is giving them essentially, a Fitbit, for about two weeks before they, have their surgery, along. With a box they plug into the reader at home and we just monitor the activity level before surgery and six. Weeks after and in, addition to this they monitor their pain they, measure how much movement they have during the during. That period and what, we're doing is currently, analyzing, that data so, we can give personalized, advice to people after. They've had their surgery and tell them how active they should be or how enact if they should be some people might be overdoing it, but the point is with very inexpensive, technology, we can improve, surgical.
Practice And give people real evidence for. How, they should behave after surgery. The. Other thing that's important for any kind of surgery and recovery from it is pain, and. Everyone's, pain is individual, there is no normal pain on. A scale of 0 to 10 my, three might be your seven so. It's important, to understand how much pain someone is in and give, them the right kind of pain relief so that they they can move again and and if you're in too much pain you're not going to be moving so. They normally do this in hospital, by having a nurse come around every couple of hours and ask you how much pain you're in and then, if it seems to be going up they'll give you more pain relief but, nurses, are very busy and often that information, comes too late, so. We designed a device we call the pain pad, note. How cheap it looks it's um it's actually a plastic box with a number pad on it and. All it does is it beeps at the patient, every, couple of hours whatever, frequency we set and just ask them to push a button to say how much pain they're in this. Is transmitted. Wirelessly to, our secure server and we. Can use this for in two ways one is for, research purposes, to see look at their pain relief history see, what the pain was see, what was working and what wasn't but. The more potential, use of it that were investigating. Next is to, send live pain. Graphs to the nurses station so as a person's, pain is starting to go, up and up and up the nurses can spot this in advance and give, the pain relief before it becomes so so bad they've got to stay in hospital next today so, we're, hoping to save lots of money for the NHS by keeping people getting people out of hospitals sooner and, the. Next step on that project by the way is a pill, logger we still haven't got, the prototype of that yet but the idea is as you take your pain, relief pill it sends a signal and logs when you took your pain relief and we can combine the. Pain level and the pain relief sending and get people really really, coordinated. With their pain relief. The. Next thing I want to tell you about is a project we've just launched. In. The last four. Months now called, stretch, it's. An acronym and we had to make up an acronym for most projects you have to make up an acronym to get funded so this stands for. Socio. Technical, resilience, for, enhancing. Targeted. Community. Health care. And. So. In English, that. Means that, we. Found that older, adults tend, to spend more, time in hospital, than they need to. You, may get hospitalized, for something simple like a urinary tract infection and then they they cure you of that but, then they're. Kind of unhappy sending, you home, because, you're. Well enough to go home but perhaps the care at home you don't you don't need full-time nursing care but you need some level of monitoring a bit, beyond what a normal home would have so. This project is about giving, people, some. Smart home technology some, wearables, to give them the confidence to go home and. Recover. In their own home and also. Connect, with what we call the circle of support and this, is the the the, ordinary, people not necessarily clinical. People around you who, support, you they could be your family your adult children your, grandchildren, it, could be neighbors community, health workers, your, GP, there's. A whole network of people who provide varying, levels of support and what. We're looking at is giving them the right information about. The patient so, that they can intervene, if if say someone goes on holiday and the person needs a visit from someone we, can detect they haven't visited in some length of time or perhaps they've. Stopped drinking they've said we detect, they're drinking less liquid. Which can lead to a urinary tract infection send, them back to hospital so, by, having the right kind of monitoring technology, in the home we, can intervene early and, get. The the right kind of data to the right person whether to the medical staff or to the neighbor so, that the person is well support in their home and can carry on living there I, should. Also mention that I, mentioned, the importance of the STEM subjects, and we, have a recruiting problem in the STEM subjects in the UK, but.
That Is not the end of everything because all, of this work requires the, social sciences as well we, spend a lot of time and a lot of our projects as I'm about to tell you about working, with social psychologists. And they, help us get the understanding of the people and the technology, right because it's never always, about the technology. So. What. Are some other things we can do well, as. You may know you saw me check my blood sugar earlier. Which was low just, check it again, see if we're getting you better yep. It's up so we'll be ok so. I don't really need to check my blood sugar I'm I have a perfectly, working, pancreas. It. It, produces. Enough insulin, to regulate my blood sugar but, as you may know diabetes. Is becoming a serious problem in many parts of the world including the UK, in, some parts of the Middle East almost. Half the population have, type 2 diabetes so, it's a growing burden, on many health care systems not. Just on the healthcare system but on the individual, because, in, order to control. Your, blood sugar level if you're diabetic you. Need to do a lot of dynamic, calculations, all the time so. As you probably know, when, you have carbohydrates like, sugar your, blood, sugar level goes up when. You take insulin your blood sugar goes down, if. You exercise your blood sugar goes down if you are or have a stressful experience your, blood sugar goes up and. Diabetics, need to make decisions about all, of these things as they're going through their day should I have a bit more of this bread because I'm going to exercise later, you. Know should I take an extra shot of insulin or will that be counteracted by the fact that my boss is going to yell at me in an hour and then I'll be stressed so, there's lots of complex, decision-making going on and we. Have a brilliant PhD, student. Dmitri. Katz who's, been building, models. And quantified. Self systems using these technologies I've been talking about to, help give diabetics, proactive, advice on what, they should do based on their current context. Not, what they should have done a few, hours ago which is the kind of information they usually get from from this from the systems, they have now if. You, manage. To look at some of the demos outside in the hall before coming in you, might have met theo giorgio one of our PhD students, just completing, he's. Doing, work in gait rehabilitation. So if you, have a stroke, or some kind of brain injury or even just. Have surgery on your lower limbs you're gonna walk funny and. Learning. How to walk properly again, it's. Almost like learning to walk again as a child you really have to be trained again on how to walk properly. And. What Theo has been doing is using the, kind of sensors you find in your smart home smartphone. To. Measure people's, gait asymmetry, how, how, a symmetric, their gate is and then. By. Haptically. Queuing them that's basically tapping, them on the ankle or on the wrist at a regular interval at, the pace they should be walking to they, can be entrained, to walk properly again, so. The kind the data looks like this this is actually my data which is kind of boring because it's completely, symmetric I mean it is actually slightly asymmetric, I'm not perfect but. If. I was if I had a stroke you would have seen a big, separation between the blue, and the red, lines which are each leg moving up and down and so. The work that Theo has been doing is having tremendous results, on people who have basically learned, to walk properly again. Now. Most of the work I've talked about is, has. Been about health related life. Logon but. I'll, just do another audience participation, thing again I put these on and so. Does anyone in the audience know, what these are. Yeah. So the ones with the hands up are under 30. Yeah. You don't count so these, are snapchat, spectacles, for those of you over 30. They. Are essentially, a camera. Which is what the little light was going around you've now been videoed and uploaded. To my snapchat account. But. No one looks at it anyway so don't worry so.
You. May think that's a bit weird especially. If you're a bit older but. You may also have seen Gil croak cameras which are things people wear when they do extreme sports I put a camera on their head and then film themselves going about so, what, we found is that. Filming. Or, even. Just still photography, in public places and posting, publicly, is just. Become more and more common it's. Something that there's as part of the the Facebook, generation the, snapchat, generation. The Instagram generation, and so. We decided, in one of our research projects, called. Privacy dynamics, and start looking at this and to see how people. Control. Their privacy when everyone, is taking pictures all the time. So. We studied groups of people who, were sharing visual, lifelogging images we gave undergraduate, students a wearable, camera we intentionally, made it ugly and bright. So it would draw attention to, the people wearing it and so, that people around them would ask them questions about it, but strangely, people. Didn't ask questions about it because. At. Least in Britain people, are very shy about doing that they assumed it was a medical device and they didn't want to embarrass. Them little. Did they know that photo was being taken so anyway we examined, what people did with these photos. After. Wearing them for a week when a group of people all wore them up grouping people all living together wore them and the. Interesting thing was. These. Were all undergraduate, students they were very protective of this privacy, of strangers, so. Strangers, appeared in their images they would delete them or. Not, share them anyway they would they would not, let anyone see them and. Then we found different, social, norms started developing in the groups of life loggers there was a social norm that developed it was it was okay to wear your camera when you're around the other people with cameras but. When you are with the, normal people you, were, much more protective, you might switch it off or hide it or whatever so it was it was quite an interesting behavior we found, so. I've told you about all these wonderful things that you can do with all this data being collected and, the. Obvious question to. Quote Jeremy Clarkson, what could possibly, go wrong, well. One. Of the major problems. That. We have is a problem, that the the, older, people the audience might recognize as the beta and VHS the. Beta and. The. Beta VHS, problem which was a format of video tape for those of you who are under 40. Which. You, had to basically choose one provider or another and and. Such is the case with many of the devices that you buy today if. You buy a Fitbit. Your data is locked into Fitbit ecosystem. And it's quite difficult to get it out. We. Call this a data silo, the, other thing it can go wrong of course is the company that you that, gave you a nice cheap wearable, and the free access to the webpage and everything else they. Can go bust and. You. Could lose your data or. More likely they. Will sell the data in their bankruptcy, sale to someone else and you have no say in that the, contract, you signed by, implicitly, using it says they can do whatever the company the buyers it can do whatever they want with it. So. It can be sold on without your permission. It, can be hard to switch providers and, it. Could also be sold if the company is hacked as we've. Seen many, high-profile. Hacks lately then it could be sold on the open market. So. This. Is a what. We call a problem, the problem we call inverse privacy, and if you have a Tesco Clubcard or, any loyalty card you also have this problem because the company have the loyalty system with knows, more about you, than you. Know about yourself and. Such. Is the case with all of these wearables, they're only giving you the data that they think is useful to you and the other data they're keeping a secret from. You even though it's yours, so, we're certain we got a project that's been looking at ways of fixing this it's, called monetize me it. Was joint work with professors. Kirsty ball and Maureen Meadows from formerly familiar, business school they've now gone on and. We've. Dealt a couple of things that can help people get control of their own data one. Of our brilliant research software engineers also known snake here in McCormick has, built a system called packrat and what. It does is is. It connects. To these providers. Of data it sucks, the data out of them and puts them in your own personal, silo away from everyone else and that has the advantage of one you get to keep your own data but two, you. Could also run, analytics. On it or someone could run analytics, for you and find interesting connections, between your data if that's what you want to do you could even sell your own data to someone if you if you want to because it's yours.
We're, Looking also in this project about the business value proposition. Of privacy, and how companies. Can be encouraged, to, basically make, keeping. Your data private a selling. Point. So. What else can go wrong well well, privacy is a very nuanced thing you know many people probably. Under the age of 30 quite happy to share absolutely all their data on social media some. Other people a bit more cagey, and some, people just want to decide on a case-by-case basis. So. One of our other brilliant, research, engineers, Vikram, Mehta who's also was also doing demos earlier has, built something called a privacy, badge now this is just a prototype here with a so, the big box in the side is just a temporary measure but, the idea is that. You. Instead. Of having disruptive, graphics that come up on your screen or beep at you or interrupt, you, you. Get subtle itching sensation, on your forearm from the privacy band and depending on the pattern of vibration it. Tells you what it you you know what is being what, is being, possibly. Accessed, and you can make a decision to have that data released block. It or prevent privacy breaches just by a subtle scratching. Action. And. The, other interesting. Bit of news is we've won an award for this two, weeks ago at the IAT innovation awards for cybersecurity, so. That's. The photo of us with our award and the certificate that's Bashara Rocha Vikram, and myself and there. Are patents pending I think in the US and the UK at the moment so. Wearability. Of devices. It, isn't just for people. Because. Humans, are easy to evaluate if someone. Doesn't like a wearable device they'll tell us we can interview them or they, can vote with their wallets by, just not buying it but. What about animals. Wearable. Technology for, animals is not new we've been doing it for about 50 years we've been using it bio telemetry, in in, the analysis of wildlife. But. We can't find out from the animals whether it's affecting, them or not and why is that important, well you, probably want your cat to feel not. To be in pain but. Poor, wearability doesn't, just mean that, your animals uncomfortable, if you're studying wildlife it can mean bad data so. We need a way of getting information from, the animal about how the, wearable, device is affecting them so.
Another, Brilliant PhD, students patrizii Apache also, in the on stage she can talk to you about, her work he's, doing work at measuring animal, ur ability and what, this is leading to is informing. The design of people, who are building wearables, not just for cats and dogs, but. For livestock and for, people doing animal, wearables to track wildlife because it's very important they get the right kind of data. So. Comes. Down to the question deep, do I think you, should life log record. This data about yourself. Well. It's me so I'm gonna say yes right so, but. Only really if it's low effort I think the real key is that it has to be low, cost not, just in money terms but in your time and also. Low cost in terms of privacy. So you, can do lots of things to to control your privacy set pseudonyms, don't use your real name that. Kind of thing and still have access to your data and. You want something you can set and forget because you. Need to have the data when you know when you need to have the data you need to have collective eight years in advance, in. Many cases so if you want a history of data if you want to be able to detect trends, then, you need to have been collecting, it beforehand and, if. Your doctor asks you have you always been this way you, can look at your data and find out or, you, can set algorithms, that automatically watch your data and look. For a trend and if, it sees you gaining weight for example you, can get a warning of this because you don't become obese overnight it happens slowly over. Time and we're very bad as humans at recognizing. Very slow changes, in ourselves. So. The. The other thing I would counsel is make sure you don't get locked in don't go to a system that doesn't let you export, your data in some way and have some control over it because otherwise you'll. Be throwing it away. I imagine. Probably some number of you have, have. Had a wearable device a fitness, tracker a Fitbit, or other brand can I just see a show of hands you've had one ever in your life and warning, you should yeah so that's at least three-quarters of the audience now, put, your hand up again if you're still wearing it after eight. Weeks. That's. About a third so, we have a mean, time to back of drawer calculation, most people have.
This. It's. About 8 to 12 weeks actually and they. Forget about and they stop collecting the data so if you're, going to do it find a system that works for you. Obviously. Be careful about sharing your data list, to be used against you there's. Been a number of cases in, the u.s. of people making insurance claims, and then. The. Finding, that their fitness tracker betrayed, them because they claimed to be injured or in some way and their fitness tracker was saying oh yes they were active, and they they shouldn't so they were they, were arrested for fraud so. Another. Thing don't become a slave to your data I've. Done, studies of people wearing fitness trackers and I, found three types of people in my, studies those who give them chakra back to me at the end and say thank you those. Who asked to keep the tracker because. They, want to wear it not every day just every once in all that just check themselves keep ourselves honest, and then. There are those who refuse, to give the tracker back no matter what by, replacement, trackers and. Check. Their steps every day. I think, Celia. One, of my participants, from my first Horizon study, her. Husband was in hospital in emergency, and she hadn't reached her 10,000 steps at five minutes to midnight and had to run around his bed six times to get up to 10,000 so, don't. Become a slave to your data and the. Final thing they'll leave you with the final thought is if. A service is free then. You're, the product it's being sold so just consider the, cost of everything, you buy. I'll. Say my final thank-yous then. Obviously. My family for putting up with me wearing every gadget imaginable, for the last 15 years. The. Nickname at home was Inspector, Gadget. All. My academic colleagues I mean we it. Is a bit of a cliche that we. Just let, all the postdocs. And PhD students and research engineers, do all the hard work and then we take credit for it but. It is at least partially true I'd like to especially thank my colleagues, in the software engineer in the design group particularly. Professor Bashar nice a BAE and. Newly. Announced. Professor, arrocha bandera if you see him afterwards congratulate, him he got his chair two weeks ago. Both. Of these people have been instrumental in all of my work and I would be I wouldn't be here without them I'd, like to thank the support staff in our in the school of computing communications, Leslie, Danielle Debbie, and Sarah and the. öyou comms team have really helped put this together and thank Lucien for allowing me to do my inaugural, and thank. You for indulging me today.
2018-01-23