Image by Bytemarks via Flickr

The past 150 years have seen an enormous consolidation of power in the hands of professionalized medicine.   What if we are at the turn of the tide – where increasingly our health (typically the domain of medicine) and well being (typically the domain of psychologists and the like) will be self managed?

At the fringes the alpha-geeks (people pursuing their goals out of passion – not desire for profit) are doing just that.   It is called The Quantified Self, people who gather regularly to share the ways that they are quantifying their own behavior in order to get “smarter”, “faster” “healthier” etc.

They are developing software and services, they are congregating in dozens of cities to share insights and innovation.  They are taking back their health and well-being.   In the snap below you see the categories of self-tracking devices and applications that are available.  In that category structure you see the outlines of the operating system for personal health.