Ginger.io, a behavioral analytics company that spun out of the MIT Media Lab, announced this week that mobile health startup, Pipette, will be folded into Ginger.io. The company adds both Pipette's software and its two founders.

Notably, Pipette was a part of the San Francisco-based Rock Health incubator program, where it developed mobile health offerings that enable hospitals and care teams to monitor and educate patients during recovery with an aim to "reduce complications and lower the cost of care by enabling early intervention of high-risk patients," according to the company. Pipette's offerings were available to smartphone, tablet and desktop users as well as those using SMS-capable phones.

“The Pipette team understands the problem of patient-reported outcomes for re-admissions in healthcare,” Anmol Madan, co-founder & CEO of Ginger.io stated in a release. “By combining their expertise with our passive sensing model, we can improve our models of patient behavior based on passive data. This helps us provide researchers with better data, and providers and payers with population management solutions that lead to better care for chronic patients.”

Two former Microsoft colleagues, Ryan Panchadsaram and Jimmy Do, founded Pipette. Both Panchadsaram and Do will join Ginger.io. At Microsoft Panchadsaram was the program manager for Outlook for Mac 2011. He also previously worked at Salesforce.com and cofounded SeventyK, a nonprofit young adult cancer advocacy group. Do was a developer at Microsoft who worked on MSN's web rendering framework and front end web services.

Ginger.io is developing software for mobile devices that aims to give pharma companies and providers detailed data on patient behavior to more effectively target new drugs and therapies. Ginger.io describes mobile phones as "powerful social sensors" that, when combined with "machine learning and data mining to passively collect and analyze subtle signals of behavior change" care providers, pharma companies, and researchers can better understand the social, physical, and mental health of users.

As of last October, Ginger.io was working with healthcare providers and two of the “top five” pharma companies. It had been previously reported that the startup’s technology has also been used to study inflammatory bowel disease by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. The company received $1.7 million in funding last October. Investors include True Ventures, Kapor Capital, ENIAC Ventures, and Launch Capital.

The Ginger.io platform is expected to become available in limited release by the middle of this month.

For more details on the Pipette team joining Ginger.io, read the press release below:

PRESS RELEASE: Pipette Joins Behavioral Analytics Startup Ginger.io

Cambridge, MA - Pipette, a mobile health startup focused on monitoring patients and reducing complications using patient-reported outcomes, will be joining Ginger.io, a behavioral analytics company and MIT Media Lab spin-off.

“The Pipette team understands the problem of patient-reported outcomes for re-admissions in healthcare,” said Anmol Madan, co-founder & CEO of Ginger.io. “By combining their expertise with our passive sensing model, we can improve our models of patient behavior based on passive data. This helps us provide researchers with better data, and providers and payers with population management solutions that lead to better care for chronic patients.”

Pipette is based in San Francisco and was part of Rock Health, a seed accelerator for healthcare startups. During the program, Pipette developed technology to enable hospitals and care teams to monitor and educate patients during their recovery. Pipette was designed to reduce complications and lower the cost of care by enabling early intervention of high-risk patients.

"The Pipette team has built an impressive product and offering in a relatively short time,” said Halle Tecco, co-founder & CEO of Rock Health. “Rock Health is proud to see them join forces with another incredible digital health startup to make an even bigger social impact."

Pipette was founded by Ryan Panchadsaram and Jimmy Do. The pair met while working together at Microsoft. “When we first met the Ginger.io team, we knew there was a fit. At the heart of both companies is the vision of gaining a deeper understanding of patients,” said Ryan Panchadsaram. “We’re looking forward to joining their team and helping uncover the potential for big data in health.”

Ginger.io is tapping into the four billion mobile phones that act as powerful social sensors. The technology, based on research out of the MIT Media Lab, uses machine learning and data mining to passively collect and analyze subtle signals of behavior change to better understand a users’ social, physical, and mental health.

“The ability to collect rich, objective, continuous data is going to revolutionize how we understand and manage patient populations,” said Mitch Kapor, investor in Ginger.io and founder of Lotus Development Company. “The mobile phone is always by your side. The team at Ginger.io is enabling researchers and clinicians to tap into that data, without asking patients to change their behavior -- that’s powerful.”

"We've seen Ginger.io grow from the conceptual stage into a movement that can have an impact on researchers, providers and the broader healthcare system.”, said Katie Rae, Managing Director of TechStars Boston, ”The behavior analytics provided by the Ginger.io platform can power applications that want to change patient behavior."

Ginger.io’s Behavioral Analytics Platform is available to a select group of clinicians and researchers across the country. Early clinical partners include the Cincinatti Children’s Hospital, the Chronic Collaborative Care Network (C3N), and Sanofi via last year’s Data Design Diabetes nationwide innovation challenge.

“Survey responses and occasional measurements don’t tell the complete picture,” said Prof. Alex Pentland, co-founder and adviser at Ginger.io, MIT Media Lab Professor, and recently named one of the 7 most-powerful data scientists in the world, according to Forbes magazine. “The self-reported responses used in research today are prone to errors and inaccuracies. As a result, billion dollar research decisions are made on flawed data. You need to get the complete picture of each patient and Ginger.io is making that possible.”

Through simple data collection and the democratization of data analytics, researchers, physicians and health care providers can cost-effectively collect long-term behavior data to generate new research insights and better manage care for patients. The platform will be made available in limited release by mid-March.

--- About Ginger.io

Ginger.io is a behavior analytics company that aims to improve the world’s health through new data insights. Ginger.io is backed by True Ventures, Kapor Capital, ENIAC Ventures, and Launch Capital. The company is a MIT Media Lab spinoff and recent TechStars alum.