One piece of data does not do much to help people make informed decisions to improve their health. One piece of data is a snapshot of a sliver of time which may or may not be an accurate reflection of the health of a person.
When many individual pieces of data are collected together over a time frame the information gleaned from that information (that is right - many data points come together to become information - not just data) is much more useful to appreciate the state of health of a given individual. A trend can be deduced so the person can understand if they are getting healthier, less healthy, or are pretty stable.
With the current state of technology, it is really close to willful neglect that so many people are constantly bombarded with individual data points about their health - but that data is not turned into (actionable) information.
Case and Point: Many people take their blood sugar daily or even many times a day to monitor their blood sugar. While this data is useful for immediate decisions to help people with diabetes manage their blood sugar, these data points are very frequently not appreciated by people in graphical form to help them understand how well they are managing their blood sugar. And even though there is an A1C test which tells a person the overall state of their blood sugar over the previous 3 months, that figure is often too macro/general a number to help the person understand which individual meal and snack choices directly cause their blood sugar to sky-rocket or stay in normal range.
If people could link (through time and date) their individual blood sugar numbers (data point) with their individual food consumption choices (data point), the information gleaned becomes useful information. Useful information (in the form of many data points) becomes the basis of knowledge. Knowledge helps people and their healthcare providers make informed decisions, or evidence based decisions, which can truly transform the state of people's health.
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