Digital health news briefs for 4/12/2017

By Jonah Comstock
02:53 pm
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Indian doctor-finder app raises $3M. Indian startup Lybrate, which helps patients in its home country connect to doctors – both in person and by telemedicine – raised another $3 million, Tech Crunch reported, in a round with undisclosed investors. The company now has $15 million in investment funding. As TechCrunch points out, Lybrate is a direct competitor with Practo, which has raised $180 million, more than 10 times as much.

How Apple keeps its own team fit. Anyone who has an Apple Watch knows that the device’s benchmark for physical fitness is “closing the rings” by meeting daily goals for movement, exercise, and standing (or rolling for wheelchair users). Employees of Apple had a little more incentive than just a graphic on a screen, though, receiving pins and T-shirts that depict the Apple Watch Rings for completing the company’s 30-day fitness challenge. MacRumors has more.

Fitbit’s heart rate sensor saves a life, but its accuracy is questioned. Good news and bad news for wearable maker Fitbit this week. On Monday, news broke of a 73-year-old woman who credits her Fitbit with saving her life. When she noticed an abnormally low heart rate on the device she went to the doctor, who discovered two pulmonary embolisms in her lungs. Fitbit is not a medical device, but this isn’t the first time its been useful in getting someone the right treatment.

Also this week, though, the accuracy of that heart rate sensor was called into question by a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study found that the sensors weren’t very accurate during strenuous exercise. The study was seized upon by Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, the law firm currently suing Fitbit in a class action suit for inaccurate heart rate monitoring.

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