Sweden-based Doro has announced a partnership with French device company Withings. Owners of Doro's new smartphone, Liberto 810, will be able to get certain Withings products at a discount. The companies plan to bring a similar offering to the United States by as early as next year.
Doro, which specializes in making phones for seniors, aims to demonstrate that combined with an adapted smartphone, they will increase the acceptance and usage of Withings devices by seniors. The partnership currently includes two Withings devices, the Withings Smart Body Analyzer, a smart weight scale, and Withings Pulse Smart Activity Tracker.
According to Doro, the partnership with Withings is just beginning. Doro President and CEO Jérôme Arnaud told MobiHealthNews that he believes the company will build on their partnership and may create an app for the extended family. This app would help family members be aware of any irregularities in the user's health.
"On the more private and particular level it is one of the most important preoccupations of the children to know how their parents' health is, and 'Is everything okay?'" Arnaud said.
He also acknowledged that there is a market for emergency response systems today and that using the Withings devices to keep track of the user's heart rate and other vitals could eventually help "alert someone who is in a position to react in case something goes wrong".
Doro already provides mPERS functionalities to some customers as part of its offerings.
Last November, Doro announced a partnership with Bosch Healthcare to expand Bosch’s European telehealth network to include a mobile phone-based component. Up until that point, Bosch’s telehealth offering in Europe had been in the home. Integration with Doro’s phones was done in order to allow seniors to be in touch with Bosche's system even outside their homes. The mobile phones have an alarm button built in, which would contain GPS information, allowing Bosch to dispatch emergency response teams to the user’s location, even if they’re not able to speak or don’t know where they are.
