With the COVID-19 pandemic preventing large gatherings of any kind, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation last week was forced to hold its hearing on big data and privacy protections in response to the pandemic as a “paper hearing.” Participants submitted written testimony only. Lawmakers sent those experts questions, and the panel responded with written answers.
Despite...
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Provata's 2016 revenue.
Merck subsidiary StayWell, which offers a preventative health platform for employers, health plans, and health systems, has acquired Provata Health for an undisclosed sum. Provata Health makes a digital health platform for employee wellness, which includes a chronic disease management program incorporating a...
CarePredict — a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company that sells a senior monitoring platform comprised of networked wearables and data-driven diagnosis prediction — has announced that will be deploying its system in LifeWell Senior Living’s newly established aging and memory care facility in Santa Fe, New Mexico, The Legacy. This will be the third LifeWell facility in which the CarePredict...
A team of NIH-funded researchers at Stanford University have published some results in Nature from a large global study of activity data, as collected by Azumio's Argus smartphone app. The data has yielded a handful of interesting findings that could have implications for public health programs targeting obesity.
"The study is 1,000 times larger than any previous study on human movement,” Scott L...
Sanofi Consumer Healthcare, a division of the global pharmaceutical company, used wearable devices in a "social experiment" that forms part of the marketing efforts for Xyzal, its 24-hour allergy medication that recently became available over the counter. The company used wearables to track the sleep and activity of allergy sufferers in a small non-scientific test in order to demonstrate ways in...
Smartwatch company Pebble, which has had a renewed focus on health and fitness features since last May, released a major update to its app and firmware, once again focused on health features. The Verge first spotted the update.
Basically, Pebble has made it easier for users to access their health features. Now one tap on the watch face brings up activity and sleep results in a redesigned format...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is working with Medidata to launch a small patient-generated health data trial of 40 patients with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that accumulates in the bone marrow. Patients in the trial will track their activity and sleep with wearable devices and use an app to answer survey questions about quality of life measures like fatigue and appetite.
“Clinical...
Raleigh, North Carolina-based heart rate sensor company Valencell has raised $8.4 million more in a round that totaled $11 million. The round was led by GII Tech with participation from existing investors TDF Ventures and WSJ Joshua Fund. This brings the company’s total funding to $24.5 million to date.
The company disclosed the first tranche of this round in September 2015 in an SEC filing....
Pairing contextual texts and activity tracking leads to people moving more, according to a small study of 48 outpatients of an academic CVD prevention center in Baltimore, Maryland that was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The study, which was conducted in three phases, looked into whether activity tracking and texting interventions among smartphone users aged 18 to 69...
Some 74 percent of adults said they plan to purchase health and fitness device within the next year. And of this group, 35 percent said they plan to buy a smartwatch, according to a survey of 1,001 online US adults conducted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), formerly the Consumer Electronics Association. The survey was fielded between August 20 and September 2.
Following smartwatches...
