Learn How We Work

Self-trackers, toolmakers, and public health leaders associated with the Quantified Self community have been collaborating on tools, events, and research to support everyday science since 2011. The links below contain brief descriptions of some of our completed and ongoing projects. If you are aligned with our mission and think we might be able to help please get in touch.

RESEARCH

EVENTS
Open Hardware

One Button Tracker

The One Button tracker, in development with Totti Labs, provides simple instrumentation for securely and accurately recording self-observations. The 3-D printed case contains an Adafruit feather board with a GPS chip for automatically setting the time.
Software

Access App for HealthKit

QS Access is a free iOS app that gives you your HealthKit data in tabular format so that you can explore it using Numbers, Excel, R, or any other common spreadsheet tool. Choose which metrics you'd like to see, then send a .csv file to yourself via email or text. No data is collected by any third party, including us.
Participant Led Research

BloodTesters: High Frequency Cholesterol Mesurement

In this year long collaborative self-tracking experiment, members of the QS community measured their blood cholesterol as often as hourly. Every participant crossed a risk category based solely on time of day.

Participant Led Research

QCycle: Tracking Ovulation with Continuous Body Temperature

QCycle is a participant-led research (PLR) project focusing on physiological change across the ovulatory cycle, using continuous body temperature with iButtons, and a range of other self-collected biometrics.

Workshop

Dissemination of N-of-1 Research

In 2018 we convened the first formal workshop for science leaders, journal editors, and policy makers to explore appropriate systems for review and dissemination of research based on self-collected data. Supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Workshop

Challenge on Tracking Pain

Pain is one of the most important topics in the Quantified Self community. In this workshop and research challenge we gathered 55 highly innovative toolmakers, researchers, and advocates to address the need for better ways to approach tracking and managing pain.
Publishing

N-of-1 Focus Theme

Methods of Information in Medicine

Edited by Martijn De Groot, Mark Drangsholt, Fernando J Martin-Sanchez, Gary Wolf
Publishing

Article 27: Science Is A Human Right

For the 4th Quantified Self Public Health Symposium we published a pamphlet reprinting two key academic papers bearing on the renewed relevance of Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees a human right to participate in science.
2018

QS18 Conference

Allen Neuringer launches the conference with images from thirty years of teaching self-experimentation. Mad Ball deals with a serious fear about inherited disability by doing a self-conducted genetic study during pregnancy. Jordan Clark registers emotional reactions to racism. And Thomas Christiansen uses GPS to discover what plants make him sneeze.

2018

QS-CVD Symposium

A novel participatory research project has self-trackers measuring their blood cholesterol as often as once an hour. Pioneers of N-of-1 methods in science give a frank account of successes and failures. And senior leaders at NIH "All of Us" initiative set an agenda for connecting clinical research with the emerging practices of the Quantified Self to accelerate progress in cardiovascular health.
2017

QS17 Conference

A photo lifelog with more than 7 million images. Hour by hour ketone tracking. An artist's 3-D sculptures incorporating twenty years of location data at one-minute-resolution. And a record of time, place, intensity, and cause for 394 episodes of crying.

2016

QS Public Health

Addressing equity in the development of projects using self-collected data, this year's symposium gives us a chance to meet youth health organizers from the Karuk tribe in the Klamath Basin, the creators and users of the Do-It-Yourself Pancreas System, and key advocates and policymakers for a public infrastructure for health data access.

2015

QS Exposition

Something's happening. People are becoming more curious about themselves. Everybody's working on something, struggling with something, trying to achieve or learn something. And to do it they're tracking their time, location, strength, sleep, pain, food, love. In June of 2015, the first ever QS Exposition brought over 2000 people together to learn how to find their own answers with their own data.
2015

QS Europe Conference

Finnish engineers bring a prototype of the Oura ring. Hackers bring DIY instruments powered by Arduino. A cancer researcher self-diagnoses an autoimmune disease. A distracted driver uses his iPhone data to incriminate himself. And a middle school teacher teaches us to read 700 words per minute.
2015

QS15 Conference

We distribute a free app that that lets you view your Apple HealthKit data in a table. Bob Troia makes a map of electromagnetic radiation in his New York apartment. Valerie Lanard tracks quitting TV. Bethany Soule records her face for an entire week. And Paul LaFontaine measures HRV at work to discover just what's stressing him out.
2015

QS Public Health

Dawn Lemanne and Mark Drangsholt and explore the prospects and challenges of N-of-1 research. Bob Evans lets us try his open source app, PACO, to set up an everyday science experiment in minutes. And we spark a conversation between diabetes hackers and the FDA.
2015

Symposium on Pain

A small accelerometer worn on the clothes to track breath. A headset that battles pain with VR games in imaginary snow. And a perfect simulation of a pharmaceutical capsule offering the world’s first branded placebo. At the end of the day, over fifty toolmakers, clinicians and people who manage chronic pain vote on who should receive the $10,000 challenge prize.
2014

QS Europe Conference

Crt Ahlin visualizes data from a million heartbeats. Jessica Richman keeps an updated list of the microbes in her gut. Maximilian Gotzler learns that certain foods make his testosterone drop. And Dr. Dana Greenfield offers a profound talk about tracking the memories that broke into her thoughts after the death of her mother.
2014

QS Public Health

Our first QS Public Health Symposium addressed the potential for self-collected data to inaugerate a new research program in the human sciences. This path-breaking symposium was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and convened in collaboration with the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego and the US Dept. of Human Resources, Office of the CTO.
2013

QS13 Conference

A mother investigates her son's blood sugar spikes and uncovers a stressful classroom situation she didn't know about before. A granddaughter presents a beautiful lifelog from a time when all self-tracking was by hand. And three founders of early QS companies talk frankly about why their project failed.

2013

QS Europe Conference

Pioneers of photo lifelogging, Niclas Johansson and Petri Määttä, bring their prototype "Memoto" mini-camera (later renamed the Narrative Clip) that snaps an automatic picture every 30 seconds. We get ahead of the coming cultural crisis by clipping four cameras to four anthropologists and sending them off for the day. The rest of us practice telling them "don't lifelog me."

2012

QS Conference

Philosopher Ann Wright shows her integrated tracking timeline that zooms in and out at any scale. Sasha Chua explains how to she uses DIY tools to track every item in her closet and make a diary of what she wears. And Joe Betts-LaCroix give gives us data from his personal experiment living his life in weeks of six twenty-eight hour days.
2011

QS Europe Conference

Danielle Roberts takes her decibel meter out to find the most silent places in the city. Martha Rotter's diet experiments reveal that Irish cows cause her acne. Hind Hobeika makes goggles to track her heart rate in the pool. Welcome to our first European conference, hosted by the founders of the QS community in the Netherlands.
2011

QS Conference

It's our very first conference. Self-trackers from all over the world discuss: "What is the Quantified Self?" We get a look at a novel sleep tracking headband called Zeo. Jason Jacobs demonstrated how he uses GPS to track his activity using a new app called Runkeeper. And Fenn Lipkowitz offers a multi-year activity diary accurate to 15 minutes that tells him he doesn't do as many dishes for his roommates as he thinks.