April, May, June. These months are typically a time for rebirth, regeneration and springing forth from the winter doldrums. While the mobile health industry certainly made strides during the second quarter of 2010, we didn’t see too many corners turned or any obvious watershed moments. That said, there were highlights. Here’s a shortlist of four contenders, do any measure up as “watershed”?
A mobile handset maker welcomed an app into its appstore that works with a Bluetooth-paired medical device.
A US mobile carrier inked a deal with a home health company that could shape its mobile health strategy from here on out.
The FCC popularized the term “eCare” to describe the mobile and connected health realm of devices and services.
Oprah Winfrey launched a health-related mobile app.
OK. Maybe some were bigger deals than others, but overall the second quarter of 2010 sure felt like a time of gathering druthers. More prep. Working toward a future launch. Venture capital continued to trickle into the space and inked deals or partnerships among the industry players remained consistent.
For our second quarterly report MobiHealthNews compiled news from the past three months and grouped industry highlights into sections based on the prime actor: Payers, mobile carriers, care providers, pharma companies and more. We’ve assembled the venture capital deals and dozens of announced JVs, deals and partnerships between mobile health organizations and startups.
Head over to our Research section for more on our new Q2 2010 Mobile Health Report.
CVS Caremark launched a free iPhone app this week that lets anyone with an iPhone look up drug information in its database, but if the user is a CVS Caremark PBM (pharmacy benefits manager) member the app gets much more useful. Once “logged-in securely” to their existing Caremark account, users can refill prescriptions, check prescription order status, view prescription history, check drug cost, find a nearby network pharmacy, and FastStart, which enables users to request a new prescription from their iPhone.
Those in the market for a “senior-friendly” phone just got another option: Samsung’s Haven, available to Verizon Wireless subscribers as of today. The Haven features a dedicated In Case of Emergency (ICE) button, adjustable fonts to make it easier to read text on the phone’s screen, speech recognition software and well-being and medical management tools.
The Wall Street Journal published a feature on wireless health services and devices that payers across the country are currently piloting, including a note that in January Humana “will launch a program to track heart patients’ vital signs wirelessly and link them up via video to chat with nurses if appropriate.”
Maybe the translation is off on this one, but Hitachi’s contender for the growing fitness monitor device market is called “Life Microscope.” It’s a watch-like device the user wears around the wrist. Like most of the other offerings on the market it makes use of accelerometers to detect the user’s activity levels. Hitachi unveiled the new device at an exhibit in Tokyo this week, according to a report in Akihabara News.