Levchin's Glow app

This week, MobiHealthNews wrote about a survey from Flurry that indicated health and fitness users still prefer the iPhone to the iPad, Allscripts' updated EHR iPad app and new company-branded app store, Samsung's launch of a gamified health app in Korea, and Basis' limited iPhone app. Here are some other stories we read this week that will add insight and scope to some mobile health trends we follow.

Can Health Tracking Apps Spur Risk-Taking? - LiveScience

Rachael Rettner's post discusses the risks that can be associated with health tracking apps. Gamified apps focus on hard numbers, such as miles run, time spent working out, or steps taken. With a plethora of wearables and apps available, the distinguishing factor between them is generally which app or device best tracks these numbers and motivates users. The competition can be fierce; recently there was even a report that crowd-sourced complaints of each product to find a winner. This article asks whether that's the best approach to helping people improve -- or perhaps if it could lead those with competitive spirits to push their limits to an extreme.

Games prove to be winning fitness motivators - SF Gate

On the other side of the fence, Stanford behavioral scientist Abby King's research attributed the success of fitness apps to game-based mechanisms. Instead of concentrating specifically on that, the post then goes into more depth discussing different behavioral strategies implemented in the games and competitions that motivate users to succeed. The story covers various health technologies that employ games to "inspire" users, and different motivators like incentives, teamwork and competition.

The Rise of the Period Apps: Where Big Data Meets Girlie Graphics - NY Mag's The Cut

The author pits the female stereotypes within these apps against the progressive nature of self-tracking and big data in this article about fertility apps. The piece also delves into the history of period tracking, from Lauren Bacon's pen and paper charting of her period to learn about ovulation and birth control to former CTO of PayPal Max Levchin's new period app, Glow, which was heavily covered a few weeks ago when it launched.

Reinventing Life Science Startups - Medical Devices and Digital Health - Huffington Post

The second in the three part series, Steve Blank describes his upcoming class at UCSF, the Lean LaunchPad class for Life Sciences and Healthcare. In this post, Blank explains the process behind FDA 510(k) clearances for devices, issues with creating a business model, and VC funding. Blank's aim in teaching the class is to test his hypothesis on whether familiarizing students with these theories could eventually help life science startups build companies more efficiently.