By 2018 an estimated 75.7 million consumer health and fitness devices with integrated wireless connectivity will ship, up from 23 million such devices in 2011, according to a recent report from IHS Technology. The research firms points out that Bluetooth Smart-connected devices are the most popular, but devices that make use of the fitness and health-focused ANT standard also have a foothold.
The...
The mobile health market will grow eightfold over the course of the next decade, from $5.1 billion in 2013 to $41.8 billion in 2023, according to a recent report from Lux Research. The firm defines mobile health technology as leveraging "common consumer electronics and mobile communication technologies to collect and analyze personal health data". The decade of impressive growth will be driven by...
According to a recent report from ON World, in the next fives years an estimated 700 million wearable technology devices will ship worldwide, which will make for a $47.4 billion market. The research firm predicts that hardware sales will continue to dominate revenues for the next five years but monitoring services, apps, and subscriptions will have faster growth rates.
“Over the past two years,...
San Diego, California-based GreatCall, which offers the Jitterbug mobile phones and service for seniors, launched two new devices this week: the GreatCall Splash and the Jitterbug5. The Splash device is a dedicated, one-button mobile personal emergency response system powered by GreatCall's 5Star mPERS offering. The small device clips onto a keychain or a purse and the company says it is...
Mountain View, California-based pregnancy tracking company Bellabeat raised $4.5 million from SVAngel, CrunchFund, Universal Music Group and angel investors.
With the Bellabeat device, pregnant women can listen to and record their babies' heartbeat and track other aspects of their pregnancy from the companion app, including movement, kicks, and prenatal care. The device is available for $129 from...
Dr. George Zouridakis PhD, a professor at the University of Houston has developed an iPhone app, called DermoScreen, that in early testing was able to detect melanoma 85 percent of the time.
The smartphone must be attached to a $500 dermoscope, which further magnifies the area of the patient's skin that will be tested.
In 2006, Zouridakis published a paper about this technology titled "SVM-based...
Three former Dexcom employees left the company last year to form a new venture, Glucovation, which is developing a direct-to-consumer, wearable device that continuously senses glucose for people trying to lose weight or improve their athletic performance. The Glucovation team is headed up by Dexcom's former senior technical director for R&D, Robert Boock, who was in charge of that company's...
By Brian Dolan
Four years ago a keynote speaker at the American Medical Informatics Association meeting in Washington D.C. made a provocative prediction about the near-future importance of patient generated health data:
"I think it's not that bold to say that in five years the kind of things I was showing you are going to put us in a position where the vast majority of information that a doctor...
Beam Technologies, maker of the Beam Brush smartphone app-enabled toothbrush, has halved the retail price of its signature product in an attempt to boost sales. The Louisville, Ky.-based startup announced the news Wednesday in an e-mail to potential customers. Correction: The original version of this article inaccurately attributed the price change to slow sales. Beam Brush says its sales to date...
This was the first year that personal emergency response service (PERS) provider Philips Lifeline setup a booth at the massive Consumer Electronic Show, where it launched GoSafe, a cellular-enabled, mobile version of its popular Lifeline PERS service. For the past few years companies like MobileHelp, GreatCall, Verizon, AT&T, Lifecomm, SecuraTrac, Vesag and others have announced or...
