Circlo Podcast

I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Juan Carlos Bello.
We shared a thoughtful, podcast-style conversation in which he educated me — and will hopefully educate you — on a range of topics.

This is Part III of my three-part interview with Dr. Juan Carlos Bello. After exploring the engineering side of his work in Part I, and discussing creativity in Part II, this section moves into something more futuristic: the future of wearables, biomechanics, and his purpose in this field.

Speaking with Dr. Bello always feels like a reminder that engineering — and learning — are deeply human acts. This part of the conversation reflects that side of him and continues the purpose of this project: to grow both personally and technically.

This is the third and last part of our incredible interview with Dr. Juan Carlos Bello.

I was very inclined to ask about the future, as in Circlo we strive to find novelty that is and will change the future. So it felt natural to ask such a prosperous university professor about his idea of the future in his field.

If you haven’t checked out Part I and Part II yet, I highly recommend starting there. They provide the full context of Dr. Bello’s background and the vision behind this three-part series.

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As he began responding, I started to realize he was giving a new perspective to a previous thought I had.

He began by talking about personalized medicine: having data that allows us to know the best treatment, routine, or diet were some examples he gave. It is true — many people today track their health with smart watches or wristbands. So this idea of personalization is already part of our everyday lives. But he visualizes this going much further than tracking heart rate, extending to things like brain waves, bioimpedance, and arterial pressure. This will become increasingly accessible, but he poses the question: could it be implemented in ecosystems such as universities, hospitals, and companies that monitor their employees’ health status and make it part of their operation?

Dr. Juan Carlos acknowledges that this may sound controlling from a business perspective, but he believes it should not be viewed through an exploitation lens. Rather, having data could optimize employees’ conditions and help them reach peak performance — reducing stress, reducing mental and physical fatigue, and ensuring each person is in the best condition to explore their creativity and comfort.

I would like to pause here. At this point I realized he was giving me a new perspective on personalized medicine. Previously, through articles and reports, I understood personalization mostly in a therapeutic sense — DNA therapeutics tailored to each patient, or individualized cancer treatments instead of general ones. That was the idea I had planned. But now, as he was speaking, I realized there are other fields that already are, and will continue to be, part of personalization in different ways, such as wearables that listen to our internal signals.

Additionally, he spoke about helping people reach peak performance, and this connects to my life as an athlete. We often think about performance in sports — optimizing to reach our best level. But through his vision, I see that we should treat people in general as athletes, because each of us performs a task that must be done at a certain level. So why not make ourselves efficient enough to reach that level? This concept of the athlete is what he develops afterward: we increasingly have more tasks to manage and complete, with greater demands. Even if these tasks are not entirely physical, they may be mentally exhausting.

This burnout leads people to decrease their performance. So in the next 10 years, wearables that help us maintain well-being — and importantly, gather long-term data about ourselves — will be accessible to everyone, providing doctors with more information.

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He responded by talking about data analysts, but a new version of what we imagine. Someone with people skills who can collaborate interdisciplinarily with doctors, nutritionists, psychologists, engineers — everyone involved in supporting human health. We as humans are complex, so the future requires seeing data in context and across different areas.

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Then I wanted to know about his future project — connecting his past to his present to his future. I connected how, when entering biomedical engineering at university, he had the curiosity to understand and solve why we are who we are, and what makes us be us — from a physics perspective and a mathematical one. And I wanted to understand how this journey has evolved into the projects or questions he wants to pursue today.

He responded that it would be something related to biomechanics, integrating the physiological aspect he really enjoys.

Our body has the answers; we just have to listen to its signals.

It would be a project that integrates many professionals from different fields, each an expert in reading signals from different organs of the body, and then sitting down together to discuss. I can visualize these future projects being really, really interesting. He sees the potential of these signals to prevent disease and improve quality of life, instead of waiting until severe pathology appears.

• He likes to use the example of when we were kids and we could do it all: learn everything, play everything, never get hurt. And he would like to extend this childlike capability — living with quality of life and the ability to still do it all.

He believes the body is capable; we just have not found a way to reduce the wear and tear, or prevent reaching the point where big solutions are needed for severe conditions.

To close, I responded: Thank you for sharing with us. From you, we have learned about biomedical engineering — how so many worlds connect — and about the future this field holds for improving people’s health, giving them more opportunities to find purpose, to achieve more, and to live with better ideas and better well-being. I really liked your response about creativity and about being a teacher. You have that gift… the ability to see the spark in young people, help them develop it, and guide it to reach other levels. 

Thank you very much.

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To you, avid reader and deep listener: I hope you found as much value in this conversation as I did. This was my first one-on-one interview, and I learned not only about biomechanics and wearables, but about listening, curiosity, and asking better questions. If this inspired you to reflect on your own work or purpose, I'm grateful. Thank you for joining me in learning in public. The path reveals itself once you decide to walk it.

"We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience." — John Dewey