Now that Runkeeper has joined ASICS as part of the latter’s recent acquisition, Dan Smith, Runkeeper’s CEO, will have a new role -- head of global digital for ASICS. Smith was chief operating officer at RunKeeper prior to becoming CEO in January, taking over for founder Jason Jacobs. Jacobs will remain on in an advisory role.
“This has been a long time coming,” Jacobs wrote in a post on medium...
Physical therapy startup raises seed round. Therapia, a Toronto-based startup that uses technology to help patients schedule physical therapy appointments in their home, raised $750,000 in seed funding. The investors were individuals in the healthcare space, including Dr. Anthony Romeo, a surgeon for the Chicago White Sox.
"Technology has really changed the way we interact with our healthcare...
This year is shaping up to be a big one for acquisitions, if not for the money (many are for undisclosed amounts) but for sheer volume. We’ve seen 30 so far, and with a little over three months to go, 2016 may well end up eclipsing 2015’s total of 37 deals. Rather than just list the companies, we've broken them down into different categories based on who the acquirer is, to try to outline some...
Smartwatch maker Pebble, one of the first companies to popularize the modern smartwatch concept, has launched a new device, called Pebble Core, that specifically targets runners. Unlike Pebble's other devices, Core is not a wristworn device, but a "a tiny little Android phone without a screen" that runners can clip-on or stick in their pocket, Pebble CEO and co-founder Eric Migicovsky told...
Last year, The University of San Diego’s California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology's (Calit2) data sharing initiative, called Health Data Exploration (HDE), awarded a total of $200,000 to five projects that aim to use aggregated personal health data to advance research. Now, the five HDE projects have released results from their first year.
Calit2, which received the...
Boston-based FitnessKeeper, maker of the Runkeeper app, has announced an agreement to be acquired by Japanese apparel company ASICS for $85 million, MobiHealthNews has learned.
"Partnering with ASICS to fulfill [our] vision together makes a ton of sense," Runkeeper founder and CEO Jason Jacobs wrote in a Medium post announcing the deal. "We both have deep roots in and focus on running as a core...
Health tracking apps and devices offer consumers the ability to track an increasing number of relevant metrics. Over the years a number of the companies behind them, especially the ones with larger user bases, have released their own insights based on interesting correlations in the data sets they've collected.
For example, just last week, Runkeeper Director of Marketing tweeted a link to a post...
It’s been almost a year since Under Armour announced its acquisition of Endomondo and MyFitnessPal for a combined $560 million, a year and change after buying MapMyFitness for $150 million.
This acquisition spree was the biggest the connected fitness space has seen since its inception. Not only did it put apparel companies like Nike and Adidas on notice (it’s not a coincidence that Adidas bought...
Runkeeper has launched a new Apple Watch app with a functionality that the company's core users -- runners -- have been requesting for a long time: It lets them track their run while leaving their smartphone at home.
There are pros and cons to the new app, which takes advantage of Apple's recently launched Watch OS 2 operating system. It will allow users to track heart rate with the Watch's...
Boston-based Runkeeper has laid off 30 percent of its workforce, as the company re-dedicates itself to creating digital fitness projects specifically for runners, a reorientation that also includes a major redesign.
News of the lay-offs came last week from BetaBoston, a Boston Globe blog, which reported that the cuts come from across the company. Runkeeper CEO Jason Jacobs told BetaBoston that...
