The digital health futurist urging sports professionals to get to grips with technology

It’s impossible to not feel inspired by – and perhaps a bit scared of – the picture that Maneesh Juneja paints of the future. “Imagine the future of healthcare in a world where seven billion people are constantly connected and online, carrying a plethora of sensors, wearables and tech so that everything they do is monitored,” he says.

“As well as details on their blood pressure and heart rate, we could see what each individual eats and when; how much they move and how often; how much sleep they get and what their drinking habits are.

“One day, it could actually be possible to monitor what entire populations are doing – and record it in real time.”

Juneja is a digital health futurist and has spent most of the past two decades working within the realm of technology and big data. With a degree in business and computing, in 1997, he joined marketing agency Dunnhumby, which was in the process of creating the vast Tesco Clubcard database. It was when he was tasked with managing Tesco’s database of eight million shoppers – being able to analyse everything they were buying, from bananas to biscuits – that Juneja first realised the true value of data capture.

Armed with that knowledge, he joined pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in 2003, spending nine years helping the company understand – through analysing data from doctors’ offices and hospitals – how drugs are used “in the real world” and how this data could impact both drug development and drug safety.   

“It was fascinating,” he recalls. “We worked with data on patients in the US, the UK, France and Germany. The largest data set had all the health insurance claims of 100 million Americans. I got to see the impact you can make on the health of people around the world because you manage to do something with patient data that helped a drug get to market just a little bit quicker.”

While he could have stayed at GSK and carved out a career in the drugs industry, a fortuitous invite to an event in 2011 changed his outlook on the future. “By chance I went to an event at the University of Cambridge called Silicon Valley comes to the UK,” he recalls.  

“I met a number of leaders from Silicon Valley and they shared their insight and vision on future technologies. When I went back to my office, I couldn’t reconcile what I’d heard with what I was working each day. So I resigned with no plan whatsoever. All I knew was I needed to create space in my life for something new to come in.”

That something new was digital health. Juneja set himself up as a consultant and immersed himself in the subject. Three years on and the investment and risk has paid off. He is now a speaker in high demand. His TEDx talks and appearances at high profile conferences, such as Health 2.0 & Body Computing, have established him as one of the foremost thought leaders on digital health.

Part of his appeal as a speaker is that he isn’t afraid to rock the apple cart. Last year, he caused a storm by suggesting that technology – more specifically the combination of big data, the internet of things, the quantified self and wearable tech – could make some doctors unemployed within the next decade. He identified GPs as being particularly vulnerable to the possible streamlining of healthcare, brought on by developing tech.

THE FUTURE OF SPORT
It is solutions such as these that pose particularly interesting questions not just for healthcare practitioners but for physical activity and sport operators too. If doctors are in danger of being made redundant, where does the tech revolution leave sport coaches and fitness staff? “It leaves them in similar peril,” is Juneja’s blunt answer.

“It’s all about whether coaches will be able to adjust and compete on equal terms with, say, a smartphone app which is linked to wearable tech sensors and which offers a set of pre-recorded videos or coaching sessions. Can personal trainers compete with the convenience, price and accessibility of a downloadable app – or even a robot?

“It might sound outlandish now, but interactive companion robots are expected to hit the market from late 2015. In years to come, there are likely to be robots capable of teaching exercise movements. Also, a robot won’t judge if a person messes up their activity or does it wrong, so some might even prefer a robot to a human being.”

So what should people working in the physical activity and sports sectors do to ensure they still have a role in 2025? Juneja says it is important for sports professionals not merely to try and compete with the technology on offer – but begin to create and take part in it.

“I think it will be a case of the industry making sure it is the one creating the new technologies and testing them – rather than just waiting for something to happen and trying to react to innovations,” Juneja says. “If you just wait for others to come up with the tech, you might find that you’re been done out of a job because a bit of technology has replaced you.

“It’s about adapting to change but, more importantly, it’s about creating the change. What the sports industry and people within it must say is ‘if this is going to be the future then I still want to play a part in it – and I’ll create something or test something to help it on its way’”.

Details: www.maneeshjuneja.com