Cornell Tech Professor Pries Open Medicine

Deborah Estrin, who founded Open mHealth, wants to build apps that capture people's everyday activities and give doctors insight into patient health.

Deborah Estrin moved from her native California to New York for an appointment as a professor at Cornell Tech and Weill Cornell Medical College. Ms. Estrin's career joins technology with public health. She's a champion of so-called small data: capturing streams of data consumers constantly create through their purchases, mobile phones and TV sets, and the possibilities of that data to change how medicine is practiced. An open-source advocate, she founded Open mHealth, which aims to open the architecture of medical apps.

Q. What projects are you working on right now?

A. I'm trying to build a small data test bed in NYC. I have a collaborative that includes AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, American Express, Intel and IBM.