Alexa, listen to me sleep. Hot on the heels of its Halo fitness, weight and sleep wearable, Business Insider reports that Amazon is also working on a contactless bedside device for tracking sleep apnea. The device in development reportedly uses millimeter-wave radar to watch breathing and movement. Codenamed "Brahms," the tracker is roughly the size of a palm, and would speak with other connected...
Update/Correction: This story has been updated with an additional statement from GreatCall. In addition, the headline originally referred erroneously to the Lively Mobile device, which was not affected by the defect or the recall.
Best Buy subsidiary GreatCall has quietly and voluntarily recalled some portion of its recently-launched Lively MobilePlus devices, and has halted the sale of new units...
Best Buy has acquired remote senior monitoring service Critical Signal Technologies (CST) and will use its platform to bolster a push into the Medicare Advantage market, the retail electronics company shared during a May 23 investor call.
Best Buy did not outline the terms of the deal during the call, only specifying that it had closed during Q2, funded with existing cash and not expected to have...
San Diego-based GreatCall, a seller of aging in place technologies purchased by Best Buy last year, is launching an updated version of its retail personal emergency response system. Called the Lively Mobile Plus, the new 4G LTE wearable can automatically contact urgent response agents when detecting a fall, or with the push of a button.
To start, changes to the device’s internal chipset and...
San Diego-based GreatCall — an old guard digital health company which started out making smartphones for seniors in 2006 but now offers a suite of connected safety products and services for aging in place individuals — has been acquired by retail chain Best Buy for $800 million.
GreatCall was previously acquired in June 2017 by private equity firm GTCR for an undisclosed amount. GTCR is selling...
Trumbull, Connecticut-based FallCall Solutions has raised a sub-$1 million seed round from Connecticut Ventures to develop a pure software-based Personal Emergency Response System (PERS) for the Apple Watch. While automated fall detecction is in the company's future pipeline, the initial launch of the app, on Apple Watch and iPhone, works as an app-based help button that can be activated by voice...
Dutch investment company Main Capital Partners has acquired a majority stake in Verklizan, a Dutch telehealth infrastructure company. Currently Verklizan operates in the Netherlands, Germany, England, France, and Spain, but one of the goals of the acquisition is to support continued international expansion.
Verklizan offers a "innovative, cloud-based, Connected Healthcare platform for social...
GreatCall, the San Diego company that started out making smartphones for seniors in 2006 but now offers a suite of connected safety products for aging in place individuals, has been acquired by Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
"The business services team has been focused on this PERS world for the better part of a decade, looking for the option...
Like all populations, the population of seniors in the United States is changing. And a generation of rising seniors is more technically savvy, is living longer, and has higher expectations for aging than ever before. This is creating new opportunities and challenges for the aging in place market, according to presenters on a Parks Associates webcast called "Connected Health in the Smart Home:...
Seattle, Washington-based Numera, a longtime mobile health company that offers mobile personal emergency response devices as well as other telehealth tools, has had its mPERS and telehealth assets acquired by Carlsbad, California-based Nortek Security and Control. According to a Nortek FAQ, Nortek funded the transaction, valued at $12 million "plus contingent consideration based on future sales...
