Does your Fitbit actually make you less likely to lose weight? Probably not, despite what you may have read recently.
That was the question a number of major consumer-focused media outlets were asking after a new study in JAMA seemed to show just that. The study, which found that young adults who used a wearable actually lost less weight than those that didn't, checked off most of the boxes...
In 2012, MobiHealthNews ran an article — contributed by patent lawyer Orion Armon of Cooley LLP — asking the question “Is mobile health about to enter a patent thicket?” Armon had noticed a stark rise in the number of patents being issued in the mobile health space. He predicted that this would likely lead to an increase in mobile health patent litigation.
Four years later, we haven’t seen nearly...
Updated with statement from Fitbit.
Fitbit's ongoing legal battle with Jawbone about patents has heated up recently, as Fitbit claims that certain Jawbone patents are overly broad and thus invalid. Fitbit is challenging a Jawbone patent before the US Patent and Trade Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board as well as asking the ITC to throw out three others based on a Supreme Court precedent....
At CES this year, a smartphone-connected pregnancy test turned some heads. But it turns out that use case might not require its own device -- just a Fitbit and a clever online community. As Buzzfeed reported last week, one New York City woman found out she was pregnant after her Fitbit device displayed a mysteriously elevated heartrate, and her husband turned to online discussion site Reddit for...
Last month saw the last vestige of BodyMedia, the FDA-cleared consumer-facing wearable device company acquired by Jawbone in 2013, slip away. On January 31st the company officially stopped making BodyMedia Fit device data available to users and shut down the BodyMedia website (it now redirects to Jawbone’s site), essentially rendering the devices useless.
“On Jan 31, 2016 support for BodyMedia...
Nearly a year after announcing its direct-to-consumer fitness tracker AmpStrip -- and after raising more than $500,000 on Indiegogo for it -- Fitlinxx has announced that it will not be developing AmpStrip as a fitness tracker, but rather as a medical device. The company will refund all of its nearly 4,000 backers on request. Engadget first reported the news.
The news came in an update to the...
Some 80 percent of people were more motivated to manage their health after using an activity tracker, according to a randomized control trial from March 2014 of 600 patients who are pre-diabetic and morbidly obese.
The study, which lasted six months, was conducted by Cigna. The activity trackers used were made by BodyMedia, which was acquired by Jawbone. The devices have since been discontinued...
Jawbone UP2
After a string of lawsuits that Jawbone has filed against Fitbit, the latter has filed one of its own, suing Jawbone and its subsidiary, BodyMedia, in Delaware District Court, for alleged patent infringement.
Fitbit is suing Jawbone over alleged infringement of three patents, two of which were issued in May 2015 and a third that was issued in December 2014. The two from May 2015...
BodyMedia's patents, now owned by Jawbone, are at the heart of the new suit.
For the second time in less than a month, Jawbone is suing Fitbit in advance of the latter company's planned June 17th initial public offering. This time the allegation is patent infringement.
Jawbone is now suing Fitbit over alleged infringement of three patents Jawbone obtained when it purchased BodyMedia in 2013....
It seems like everybody's talking about fitness device accuracy these days. A small study at the University of Pennsylvania found that out of clip-on pedometers, wristworn wearables, and apps, the wristworn devices were the least accurate. Another study, from the American Council on Exercise, found a range of accuracy levels for step counting on wearable devices, but found them lacking when it...
