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Startups launch and rumors swirl ahead of CES
By Brian Dolan
 The International 2010 Consumer Electronics Show kicked off this week with a flurry of news, but come Saturday a portion of the CE industry’s attention will be focused on connected health devices and services at the Digital Health Summit co-located at the event.
Despite the event season’s early start, however, wireless health companies have already begun making news in the New Year:
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Wellcore, a Menlo Venture-backed startup unveiled its fall detection and wellness monitoring service today. The company uses accelerometers, GPS, cellular, Bluetooth, motion detection algorithms and Zigbee to help users.
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Mayo Clinic has created a joint venture, called mRemedy, with app developer DoApps that is focused on smartphone health applications based on Mayo’s Research. First offering: Mayo Clinic Mediation app.
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GE Healthcare and Intel expanded their marketing agreement for the Intel Health Guide beyond the US and into the UK market.
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Rumors are intensifying that Apple will introduce a tablet computer at the end of the month — and we believe that given the healthcare industry’s affinity for tablets, the announcement will include some features or applications geared toward the vertical. (Remember the Apple-Epic System mobile EHR software pilot at Stanford?)
A few companies also snuck in some last minute news at the end of 2009:
Finally, if you have a hot tip for what’s wireless health and news at CES this week, don’t be shy…
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Mayo Clinic forms mobile app start-up, mRemedy
By Brian Dolan
Mayo Clinic has partnered with smartphone application developer DoApps to form a new start-up, called mRemedy, which is focused on creating health apps for smartphones. mRemedy’s apps will be based on Mayo Clinic’s research and services. The first mRemedy app, Mayo Clinic Meditation, launched last week for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. The app, which teaches users relaxation and breathing techniques costs $4.95 and is based on a program created by Mayo professor Dr. Amit Sood.
mRemedy told MedCity News it has sold some 200 apps since launching.
Mayo believes that mRemedy will help distribute its products beyond the traditional care setting and will generate revenue thanks to the booming smartphone apps market, Kathy Anderson, a spokeswoman for Mayo’s Office of Intellectual Property told MedCity News.
Mayo’s partner Rochester-based DoApps created two apps, myLite and mLighter, which became “Top Apps of 2008,” according to Apple. mLite was a flash light program (more or less makes the phone’s screen turn all white), but it was the 27th most downloaded free application in 2008.
Check out this video, which demonstrates mRemedy’s first smartphone app: Continue >>
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Kaiser Permanente’s SMS reminders go live
By Brian Dolan
Nearly one year ago, we reported on Kaiser Permanente’s successful pilot program with text message (SMS) solutions provider mobileStorm for appointment reminders. At the time KP announced that the pilot reduced costs and helped patients enough that it planned to roll the service out nationally by year-end. On December 11 Kaiser Permanente officially rolled out its SMS appointment reminder service, powered by mobileStorm.
mobileStorm’s SMS platform enabled Kaiser to create and facilitate appointment reminders, treatment reminders as well as alerts that lab results have returned. The SMS vendor also outfitted the service with a short code “KAISER” to help the organization interact with patients. Assumedly, users can send text replies to “KAISER.” The text messaging platform integrated into KP’s automated appointment reminder system and reminders were sent to those patients who opted in a day before the appointment. Continue>>
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Wellcore unveils fall detection, activity monitor
By Brian Dolan
One in three people 65-years-old and older fall each year, and more than 300,000 hip fractures occur each year, mostly caused by falls, according to the Centers for Disease Control. What’s more: one in five people die within a year of breaking their hip. Existing devices that aid those who fall enable them to call for help after the fall, in other words, once the damage has been done. Another shortcoming of the classic “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” pendant is that it requires the wearer to push a button to signal for help
Menlo Ventures-backed startup, Wellcore, which just launched today at CES, has joined the fray of a growing number of wireless health companies focused on fall detection by using wireless sensors (MediSens, iShoe, AT&T’s smart slippers). The Wellcore device connects to a docking station via Zigbee wireless technology while at home and can even pair via Bluetooth with some cell phone models when the user is on-the-go.
While WellCore offers much of the same services as legacy pendants, during the last two and a half years the company has attempted to improve on the old personal emergency response system (PERS) model by taking it mobile, making it hands-free, adding motion detection and advanced pattern detection, including online monitoring and making it look more like a stylish fitness device.
“People typically refuse to wear the old PERS pendants,” Casey Pittock, Wellcore’s executive vice president of business development told MobiHealthNews. “There’s a stigma around them: Our focus group called them ‘institutional-looking.’” Wellcore put a lot of effort into making its brushed aluminum device stylish and even tapped the founder of Frog Design, Dr. Hartmut Esslinger to oversee the design process. In its first iteration, the device is not a pendant necklace, but rather a clip-on device. Continue >>
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Center for Connected Health’s startup: SmartBeat
By Brian Dolan
Earlier this year, Boston-based health system Partners Healthcare’s Center for Connected Health spun out a startup initially focused on a high blood pressure management service. The startup was temporarily named “Connected Health,” while it shopped around for venture capital and a better brand name. Today the Center for Connected Health announced that the startup will be called SmartBeat.
SmartBeat first piloted its offering as part of a wellness program at Boston area EMC Corporation. SmartBeat aims to provide employees with anytime, anywhere access to self-management tools to improve their health and make positive lifestyle and health behavior changes. SmartBeat does much more than just high blood pressure management now. Here’s how SmartBeat describes its product: Continue >>
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Report: Apple tablet to ship in March
By Brian Dolan
Apple plans to demo its long rumored multimedia tablet device later this month, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal that cites anonymous sources. The WSJ’s sources say that Apple plans to ship the product come March but that has not been finalized and may change. The report also speculated that the tablet device will have a 10- to 11-inch touch screen. One source told the WSJ that Apple was tinkering with two different finishes for the tablet, which might indicate two different versions of the device. It also could mean the company is still deciding between two looks.
According to the report, analysts believe that Apple’s device could be priced at around $1,000, but that ticket might include a subscription to a national WiFi service.
Given the rumored timing of the announcement and the obvious appeal of wireless tablets for the healthcare industry, we wonder whether the tablet’s launch event will include the unveiling of a product based on Apple’s trials with electronic medical records provider Epic Systems. The two companies were working together on a pilot in a Stanford hospital, but details were scarce at the time. Perhaps the companies were testing out the rumored tablet and a new Apple tablet and iPhone-friendly EMR? Continue>>
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Halo Monitoring inks deal with A&D Medical
By Brian Dolan
Halo Monitoring, a developer of wireless health remote monitoring technology, announced a deal with A&D Medical this past week. The partnership builds on Halo’s myHalo web-based personal health monitoring system by including Bluetooth-enabled weight scales and blood pressure cuffs.
Halo Monitoring announced its product nearly one year ago at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: myHalo “wirelessly transmits secure vital signs, activities of daily living, and critical event information (such as when a user falls),” the company stated at the time. “Unlike other monitoring strategies in the past, the system immediately detects when the user falls and automatically transmits that information in real time without prompting by the senior.”
The myHalo device is worn under clothing, as a chest strap, and can send alerts to caregivers and family members via email and text messages. The health data is also sent to Halo’s secure online portal, but Halo inked a deal with Microsoft to connect to the company’s personal health platform, HealthVault in September 2009.
Here’s how Halo’s deal with A&D breaks down: Continue >>
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Report: 21 percent want health info via SMS
By Brian Dolan
PricewaterhouseCoopers has published a report over the weekend that examines ways by which the healthcare industry might “squeeze” more cost savings our of the system. As you might imagine connected health solutions are a consistent theme throughout much of the report. Here’s how it breaks down:
Telecommunications service providers: PwC notes that big telecom companies including Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are working to play a bigger role in the healthcare industry. PwC hedges its bets on whether they will succeed: “Technology and telecommunications companies may become key players in setting new regulatory rules versus just playing by existing ones.” Telecom companies are notorious lobbyists — as an industry they typically spend more than most other ones — making them a regulatory influencer for sure. Regulations aside, PwC predicts that “new players will continue to change the structure of the industry, the basis for competition, and the way health services are delivered.”
Home health care: PwC provides an market growth projection we haven’t seen before: “The growth rate of the home healthcare and disease management markets are expected to increase to 25 percent 2010 and to remain steady over the following five years.” The firm also projects that remote patient monitoring will play a bigger role in home health: “Increased availability of remote patient monitoring systems will complement disease management and home health care to engage consumers with constant feedback on their health.” Continue >>
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CTIA to FCC: Network neutrality threatens mHealth
By Brian Dolan
The wireless association CTIA put together a series of video interviews and presentations focused on wireless health for their Wonder of Wireless (WoW) series. The wireless health focused segment includes an interview with MedApps, an interview with CTIA President Steve Largent about wireless trends for 2010, a presentation on carriers’ needs for additional spectrum because of wireless health, and a story about a woman whose life is saved by her cell phone.
The real meat of the program is the policy segment, which is just the latest effort from CTIA to convince the FCC and rally the wireless industry around the cause for more spectrum. We covered the CTIA’s letter to the FCC late last year, which included the request for more spectrum and a request that carriers continue to be able to manage their own networks. (Be sure to read CTIA’s letter here, it includes a wealth of information about the wireless health industry). Here are a few excerpts from the WoW program: Continue >>
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LifeSync buys Motorola remote monitoring patents
By Brian Dolan
According to a report from the Associated Press just before the holidays, Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based LifeSync Holdings bought a number of medical patents from Motorola. According to the AP, LifeSync purchased the Besson Patent Portfolio and various other patents that enable wireless monitoring of patients from Motorola.
The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.
LifeSync Holdings is the parent company of LifeSync Corporation, (not to be confused with Humana subsidiary LifeSynch). LifeSync makes and develops the LifeSync Wireless ECG System, a wireless ECG transmission device used by hospitals in conjunction with their existing patient monitoring equipment to improve patient safety and hospital productivity, according to the company.
For more on LifeSync, check out its website here.
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Aussie operator: Mobile-based diabetes manager
By Brian Dolan
Entra Health Systems, an applied healthcare technology developer, is powering a mobile phone-based diabetes management service recently launched on Australian wireless operator Telstra’s network. The service is called the Telstra Diabetes Management Online Service in Australia, and it includes Entra’s MyGlucoHealth Wireless meter, Bluetooth technology and the user’s mobile phone. Entra is calling it the “first commercially available mobile phone application for people with diabetes” in Australia.
"The Telstra Diabetes Management Online Service uses the MyGlucoHealth Wireless blood glucose meter with integrated Bluetooth® technology to transmit test results through a Telstra mobile phone over the Telstra Next G network to a secure web portal. Individual patient results from the meter can then be accessed via mobile phone, or online by the patient’s care team. Sophisticated online analytics, trend analysis and other charting capabilities make review of patient data fast and easy. Continue >>
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MedApps attains CE Mark, eyes Europe, Canada
By Brian Dolan
Wireless remote monitoring company MedApps announced that it has received ISO 13485:2003 and ISO 9001:2008 certification from Underwriters Laboratories (UL), which subsequently led to a CE Mark certification and CMDCAS approval, enabling the company to market its products throughout Europe and Canada.
To date, MedApps has secured two FDA clearances, various FCC certifications, AT&T and Verizon certifications in addition to the recent ISO 13485 / 9001 and CE Mark certification, according to the company’s CEO and Founder Kent Dicks. Continue >>
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Ten Aging in Place Trends to Watch in 2010
By Laurie Orlov, Founder, Aging in Place Technology Watch
It’s the end of the year and time for that wrap-up of the indicators from 2009 that will drive trends for 2010 — what it all means — more analysis on another day.
1. Location-aware tech enables more info, greater safety. GPS became even more useful in 2009. Verizon replaced its Chaperone service with Family Locator, The Alzheimer’s Association introduced its ComfortZone(powered by OmniLink), several other tracking technology vendors launched, and location-based mapping and direction technologies, 2009 was a good GPS-enabled year.
2. Home automation technology vendors see possibilities. Just as home remodelers see possibilities in aging-in-place retrofits (70% of NAHB builders in 2009), in a bad economy, home automation vendors also saw possibilities in the market.
3. Mobile health app possibilities grow. Mobile web usage during 2009 got a growth spurt from boomers and seniors — and spawned new apps like LiveNurse from Jitterbug. According to Gartner, mobile health applications (along with location-based apps) are in the top 10 application growth areas for consumers. Continue >>
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The 15 most popular 2009 wireless health stories
By Brian Dolan
While our year-end report is a solid snapshot of the state of the industry at the end of 2009, we noticed that a good number of our most popular news posts from the past year did not find their place in the overall narrative.
As expected the iPhone was a dominant theme for our most popular posts of 2009, which were picked based on which ones accumulated the greatest number of views during the past year. (Naturally, some of the posts from earlier in the year benefited from having more time to accumulate views.) Other big brands that made the list include Weight Watchers, Roche and Jitterbug, which managed to make news that proved to be among the most popular this past year. Our interviews with Johnson & Johnson company LifeScan, Scott Eising from the Mayo Clinic, and Natalie Hodge (”the first iPhone doctor”) from Personal Pediatrics ranked among our 15 most read posts, too.
MobiHealthNews published more than 700 posts in 2009, here’s the list of the 15 that proved most popular: Continue >>
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January 9, 2010
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