Google Names Memphis its Tennessee eCity, Citing MD2K Center of Excellence

January 14, 2016 - Google has named Memphis its Tennessee eCity for 2015, and cited research at the Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K) as one of the reasons.

"Memphis is a musical city – it's the birthplace of the blues and rock 'n' roll and a hotspot for country," Google said of Memphis. "The city also has a technology focus. The University of Memphis has a specialty in sensor research and has pioneered fully reconfigurable modular body-worn sensors for easy and portable vitality, cardiac and neurological monitoring."

The sensor research Google refers to is being conducted by the MD2K Center, headquartered at the University of Memphis. MD2K is one of 11 national Big Data Centers of Excellence awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2014 as part of its Big Data-to-Knowledge (BD2K) initiative. The team, comprised of top mHealth researchers from 12 universities and the non-profit Open mHealth, is developing tools that will make it easier to gather, analyze and interpret health data generated by mobile and wearable sensors.

This data will then be used to quantify the factors – biological, behavioral, social and environmental – that contribute to health and disease risk. The ultimate goal is to develop timely and personalized mobile health interventions for the early detection and prevention of adverse health events. The Center's work will help realize the vision of Precision Medicine that President Obama proposed in 2015, and which has been funded in the 2016 federal budget.

"We're very pleased that MD2K's research played a role in Memphis being recognized by Google as its Tennessee eCity," said Dr. Santosh Kumar, the Center's director and lead investigator. "As we continue to develop Big Data-enabled innovative mobile technologies to improve health, we hope to bring additional positive recognition and opportunities to the University and the Memphis community."

Google rated cities in every state according to the online strength of local small businesses, and the city with the highest scores were designated a Google eCity. To view the full list of cities and learn how they were chosen, click here.

Contact: Barbara Burch Kuhn
901.678.1473
barbara.kuhn@memphis.edu