Diet and lifestyle: Technological innovation in a digital world

Abstract

Diet and lifestyle are some of the most important choices a human being makes in their life. Each era has its own way of influencing this. Today we are living in a digital era where technologies like Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Data Analytics, lol in the form of digital wearables have changed the lifestyle of people. In this project, we are going to delve into these technologies and some examples of them. We are also going to discuss digital applications (Cult.fit & Aarogya Setu) which are influencing our lives. Apps like Cult.fit are going to be examples that will show how technology is not only changing our lifestyle but also influencing our diets. We also intend to go beyond the personal level and discuss how technological innovation is impacting our country. Healthcare infrastructure is insufficient in our country. A major population segment doesn’t have access to healthcare facilities, and that creates a lot of problems. With the advent of the internet and other digital tools, a lot of efforts have gone into solving major problems through using these tools. While the natural speed of the adoption of technologies into healthcare was underway, covid presented a whole new set of problems. Besides being transmitted through human contact, it forced everything to either go digital or get stopped. In this scenario, covid helped healthcare to get a huge digital push. Governments as well as private organizations put in a lot of resources to get things digital to provide a healthcare continuum to the masses in times of pandemics. There has been some success in this field as well as many of the initiatives got widespread adoption through active government intervention and public awareness. In this context, we thought of presenting this paper as a near-comprehensive discussion about the technological interventions, their use cases in healthcare-related fields, examples as well as challenges posed to this solution. It is very important to critically analyze the problems associated as it is a major policy change taken in a very short span of time under the shadow of a huge pandemic. Policy decisions taken hastily in such manners often ignore many important stakeholders and the fallout on them. Success stories in those conditions are often not scalable to normal situations but nonetheless get cited and used as concrete proof. Hence, the motive here is to analyze and incorporate the less discussed but critical aspects of the intervention as well. That discussion will, in fact, even add to the long-term success of these measures and provide a solid base for the future of technology in healthcare. The other critical angle over here is to take inspiration from the various implementations across the globe and then to see which of them can be scaled to Indian conditions as well. While the Indian healthcare system is quite different from other advanced economies yet many of the digital ventures, e.g., Uber, Walmart, Amazon, has been doing pretty well here as well. Some of these ideas were successfully copied and adapted as per Indian conditions, and that gives some hope that even the healthcare interventions might be implemented here too.