This article is part of the ‘Think Further’ series, sponsored by Fred Alger Management, Inc. For more ‘Think Further’ content and videos, visit thinkfurtheralger.com.

Throughout my career I have repeatedly seen that remote patient monitoring can lower costs and extend life better than prescription drugs. Which got me thinking: if this works for chronically ill patients, what are the possibilities for the general population?

We are living in an era of exploding popularity for consumer health and wellness devices and online services that help manage activity, food, sleep, stress, resilience, and more. These tools are creating an incredible amount of digital exhaust which, at the individual level, combines to create a detailed, real-time health fingerprint of each person, and at the aggregate level provides healthcare professionals with more information than ever before possible about what keeps people healthy (and what makes them sick).

Health care over the next 50…