Altimetrik has developed a ‘health behaviour algorithm’ using ‘Social Network Analysis’. It allows mining data through social networks like Facebook and Linkedin to analyse useful behavioural patterns.

The company sees that the results of the 'health behaviour algorithm’ can be used by the government to devise health plans based on the health behaviour of users. Pharmaceutical companies also extrapolate data from the algorithm to target specific markets. Insurance companies can even come up with specific plans based on the health behaviour of people.

“The use of social network analysis to understand human behaviour is in vogue by researchers globally. The results of this approach are valuable to create a healthy society. Our findings have been published in some of the international journals including World Academy of Science, Engineering & Technology,” said Namrata Mishra, research analyst, Altimetrik  in an email.

Facebook is the third largest social media platform available on the internet. Mishra used her personal account with connections at various locations, to device the algorithm.

“Currently this algorithm is limited to health behaviours. Going forward, it can be extended to identify different diseases and sentiments of people. Big data analytical techniques can be used to analyse large set of information collected from Multiple Social Networks (MSN). We see social networks immensely impacting the behaviour of the society. Many researchers have used social network analysis to understand human behaviour because it depicts the social and economic environment. The behaviour pattern can be represented as social graphs,” she added.

In computer science terminology, a graph is a data structure which contains a finite set of ordered pairs that connect certain entities referred to as nodes. These graphs can be directed graphs or undirected graphs. For example, in Facebook, if X is a friend of Y, Y must be a friend of X, So Facebook is an undirected graph. While in Twitter, If X follows Y, Y need not follow X, hence Twitter is a directed graph, she explained.

“The company harbors the spirit of meaningful research and innovation. Therefore, we were able to arrive at conclusion with a number of parameters to reveal user behaviour. With the help of our data scientists and intensive number-crunching, we were able to process all the said parameters in the form of an algorithm to analyse behavioural patterns of users. This development of the algorithm took 3 months,” said Mishra.

The ‘Altimetrik Labs’ enables incubation of ideas and investments. With a strong pipeline of projects and patents, the algorithm is a project that the company would soon be taking to completion. After ensuring due-diligence, it would look to partner with private and public institutes. Therefore efforts are being made to take the solution to the market very soon, said Mishra.