$1.2B ending to the Palm scuttlebutt: Hewlett-Packard announced plans to acquire Palm for about $1.2 billion in cash. The Wall Street Journal summed the deal up nicely: The deal ends "the scuttlebutt about what would happen to the once-pioneering smartphone maker, [which] has come onto hard times as others have surpassed Palm's presence in the sector." Perhaps the medical industry more than others has taken note of Palm's devices' fall from grace -- just a few years ago Palm's brand was synonymous with mobile medical applications. We took a quick look at the Palm-HP deal in the context of healthcare enterprise mobility, and found that HP seems to feature healthcare as a key vertical for its (very) limited handheld device offerings already. More
$2 million divided by $400 billion: In other financial news, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore) co-chaired a panel on aging in place technologies in the Senate last week. Wyden stated that CMS spent $400 billion in reimbursements last year but only $2 million of it went to eCare services. That's 0.0005 percent of total reimbursements. Conclusion: Plenty of room for growth in mobile health. More
Crying wolf: While on the government beat, here's some thoughts about the FDA -- consultant and general wireless guru Nick Hunn penned a punchy editorial on the possibility that all this talk about FDA regulation of mHealth might be teetering on the edge of "crying wolf." It could be scaring some companies away from the mHealth opportunity. Wireless operators, perhaps? More
Blood pressure pilot: If the thought of FDA regulation is stressing you out and you happen to live in the Miami area, the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and its new partner Ideal Life might have just the ticket. The two agreed to pilot Ideal Life's wireless remote monitoring system to help users better manage their high blood pressure. More
18 months of medical apps for iPhone: It's been about 18 months since the medical category for iPhone apps showed up in the AppStore, and it's also been about one year since we first published our timeline of the iPhone as a medical tool -- notice careful avoidance of the term "medical device". By popular demand, we updated our iPhone timeline so that it now chronicles iPhone-related medical milestones between November 2008 and the present day. More
Events, events, events: In other news, I'm thrilled to have just received an invitation to present at Stanford's Mobile Health 2010 event later this month. Also, I'm moderating an investment trends discussion at Healthcare Unbound in San Diego and an analysts' roundtable at the World Congress Summit on Wireless Health in Boston later this summer. Find all the details on these events and more in the sidebar to your right.
