BlackBerry sees healthcare opportunities in India

By: Brian Dolan | Jun 10, 2010        

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BlackbBerry Maestros Vodafone EssarBlackBerry-maker Research in Motion (RIM), has teamed up with Vodafone Essar in India and healthcare IT company Maestros to launch the eUNO R10, a device for mobile paramedics thats aids in the early detection and prevention of heart attacks. The dedicated devices record the cardiogram, connect to the Internet and send the ECG up to a medical records server, which then automatically pushes a report to the doctor’s BlackBerry smartphone over the Vodafone Essar network. The physicians can also access the application on their smartphone and retrieve patient information.

The device has now been tested on 100 patients during the past year, but has launched commercially as of last week. Nanavati hospital in Mumbai, India will be the first to offer the device.

Frenny Bawa, managing director of India for RIM explained that in the Indian market RIM is well-positioned for growth especially in healthcare where RIM can help minimize the distance between the doctor and patient. Keep reading>>

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Who pays? Employers, of course.

By: Brian Dolan | Jun 10, 2010        

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Brian Dolan, Editor, MobiHealthNews“Health insurance is the only industry that doesn’t have a causal linkage to rates. In auto you pay more when you have accidents. This is the first time we’re doing this in health,” Virgin Healthmiles, CEO, Sean Forbes told ZDNet in a recent interview.

By using blood pressure monitors, pedometers and other devices, Virgin Healthmiles measures compliance closely and discounts are tweaked based on users’ actual participation. According to Forbes, companies that have offered the program to employees have managed to get as many as 40 percent of their employees to participate.

“They give people doing the right things 10 to 20 percent cuts in their next year premium, and layer on a corresponding increase in the portion of the population not doing the right thing. That allows them to do this on a cost neutral basis. It also allows them to create a causal link to the pricing of coverage,” Forbes said.

While Virgin may have its own unique approach, others are taking notice of the opportunity for employer adoption of wellness-related connected health devices. Keep reading>>

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Jitterbug: 12K Live Nurse customers

By: Brian Dolan | Jun 9, 2010        

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Jitterbug Mobile Health Services Adoption“Larger [wireless] carriers don’t think mobile health is ‘here’ yet,” Jitterbug parent company GreatCall CEO David Inns said during a presentation at the Mobile Health 2010 event at Stanford last month. “That’s great news for us.”

Inns explained that while the 65 year old and older demographic makes up about 15 percent of mobile users, the age group accounts for about 40 percent of all healthcare costs in the US.

“Getting people engaged at a simple level in their health can have a big impact,” Inns said. “What’s critical for gaining traction in the 65+ market is ’service’.”

Inns pointed to a handful of Jitterbug’s recently offered mobile health services and ticked off the number of users for each as well as some other interesting stats and the new name for its forthcoming mPERS offering. Keep reading>>

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Shorts: Allscripts-Eclipsys; Blausen; Text4Baby

By: Brian Dolan | Jun 9, 2010        

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Blausen Human Atlas HDAllscripts and Eclipsys agreed to merge in a $1.3 billion deal today: Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman will become CEO of the combined company, while Phil Pead, president and CEO of Eclipsys will become its chairman. Both Allscripts and Eclipsys have been bullish about offering smartphone apps that enabled healthcare workers remote access to their electronic health records offerings. More

Human Atlas HD: Blausen launches Human Atlas HD for Apple’s iPad. More

UK Smart Home researchers explore health sensors for telecare: “People want to stay in their own homes for as long as possible and installing sensors is about helping them do that while also reassuring their families that Mum or Dad is okay.” More

Syniverse moves 1 million text messages for Text4Baby: Syniverse, a text message service provider noted that its the part of its business focused on the mobile enterprise services is growing at a steady rate thanks to consumer interest in application-to-person (A2P) solutions, such as mobile banking and mHealth. In the first quarter of 2010, Syniverse saw a 73 percent increase in the total number of enterprise messages delivered year over year. The company also “moved its 1 millionth message for the U.S.-based text4baby mobile health initiative in April 2010, another signal for increasing popularity of text-based A2P messaging communications among consumers,” according to a recent press release. More Keep reading>>

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HopSkipConnect, now Healthrageous snags $6M

By: Brian Dolan | Jun 9, 2010        

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iMetrikusPartners Healthcare spinoff Hop Skip Connect (based partially on the Partners blood pressure program SmartBeat) has renamed to Healthrageous and announced a $6 million first round of investment. North Bridge Venture Partners led the investment round while Egan Managed Capital and Long River Ventures also participated.

Healthrageous has developed a health technology platform that provides personalized, interactive, self-management tools to help individuals shed unhealthy habits and improve adherence to medical advice. Healthrageous will leverage wireless biometric sensors, smart phones, individualized coaching, incentive programs and social networks. The platform can connect up to some 60 wireless biometric sensors, according to the startups CEO Rick Lee, who was previously with Magellan Health Services. The offering can provide feedback to users on various platforms, including through mobile phones, PCs or connected televisions.

EMC, which piloted the SmartBeat wireless blood pressure monitoring service through Partners’ Center for Connected Health, will return to Healthrageous as its first paying customer this fall. (During the pilot, EMC employees used an iMetrikus modem to connect their devices.) In a few weeks the startup may also announce another Boston-area company as its second customer.

“Our key focus is supporting healthy lifestyles. More than half of all chronic medical conditions develop as a result of unhealthy behaviors,” Lee said in a statement. “These conditions represent hundreds of billions of dollars in avoidable healthcare costs annually.”

At a recent industry event, Lee explained one of the startup’s offerings might be a pedometer-based virtual race to see which user could “walk faster” to Los Angeles or New York City. In other words, who could log the same amount of steps that it would take to reach those destinations in the shortest amount of time.

The startup’s primary target customers are varied: large employers, health plans and insurers, specialty care and disease management companies, provider health systems, pharmaceutical makers and clinical trial sponsors, pharmacy benefit managers, device makers, and consumer wellness retail and fitness brands. Keep reading>>

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Polar adds heart monitor to Nike+iPod

By: Brian Dolan | Jun 8, 2010        

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polar-wearlink-06-07-2010-1Polar has inked a deal with Nike to connect a wireless-enabled heart rate monitor, called WearLink, to Nike+, one of the most high profile connected fitness products on the market. Users strap the WearLink accessory around their chest and it transmits the user’s heart rate wirelessly to their Nike+ iPod Sport Kit or Nike SportBand.

The new accessory enables users to monitor their beats per minute while they run with their Nike+ SportBand, or hear spoken feedback of their BPM during their Nike+ iPod workout. Following the workout, users can track how long they ran in their target heart rate zone and track heart rate trends over time.

Nike+ has long been referred to as the quintessential example of a personal area network (PAN) product. A sensor in the user’s Nike shoe wirelessly interacts with the user’s iPod, iPhone or Nike SportsBand. The Nike+ system tracks elapsed time of the workout, the distance traveled, pace and calories burned. With the new Polar accessory, heart rate can be added to the list.

According to the companies’ press release: “The soft textile chest strap seamlessly adapts to the user’s body shape, bringing full freedom of movement to the training session. The comfortable textile strap is also machine-washable and with its hook mechanism, the transmitter is just as quick to put on as it is to take off. A user replaceable battery also increases the ease-of-use.” Keep reading>>

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