Jawbone Hires Its First VP Of Data To Focus On The Intersection Of Wearables, Quantified Self And Personalized Health

Jawbone has made a key hire that shows some of the direction the company is headed towards when it comes to the quantified self and wearables development. The developer and manufacturer of the fitness device UP has brought on Monica Rogati, who was formerly a senior data scientist at LinkedIn, to be the company's first VP of data.

Rogati is a huge win for Jawbone when it comes to talent. At LinkedIn, she developed the system that matches jobs to candidates, and created the first machine-learning model for the People You May Know feature, according to a Forbes profile. At Jawbone, she is leading the data team and focusing on the intersection of wearable computing, quantified self and personalized health care.

Jawbone CEO and founder Hosain Rahman explains that Rogati is one of the best data scientists in the space, so it was a no brainer when it came to trying to recruit her to lead data efforts at Jawbone. "Not only does she have a deep technical background, but she can take data and actually turn this into personalized, meaningful product experiences," Rahman said in an interview.

Earlier this year, Jawbone acquired MassiveHealth to add to its data-mining efforts. The company also bought Body Media, which creates a wearable, health-tracking device. We're assuming that Rogati will be working on how to add innovative software enhancements and products around the data uploaded by users of the UP and other devices.

Her hiring, Rahman explains further, is representative of the supercharging of Jawbone's data-mining efforts. In the data-focused approach, Jawbone is tackling how various factors like sleep, weather, nutrition and more affect and are related to each other.

"We want our users to be able to give them understanding on top of their data, and then make smarter choices," Rahman says. Part of this is being able to give users a more personalized view of their health and data, he adds.

"This is just the beginning, and there is so much more to come when it comes to taking data and actually seeing what it means for consumers," said Rahman.

It should be interesting to see what product additions Rogati develops to create a more personalized and insightful view of the data processed by the UP, and even the Body Media band. We've been speculating that Jawbone is beyond developing fitness gadgets and into creating full-fledged health-monitoring devices. Software that is able to process and create valuable insights from this data will be integral to the success of this effort.