Denver-based Welltok, the health management company that makes the CafeWell Health Optimization Platform, has raised $33.7 million in Series E funding. Additionally, the company secured a new debt facility that equips Welltok with $13 million of expanded borrowing capacity. The combined financing will be used for continued development of CafeWell, other complementary digital healthcare service...
Denver, Colorado-based health management company Welltok, which makes the CafeWell Health Optimization Platform, has acquired kids' activity tracking platform Zamzee, which formerly spun out of Redwood City, California-based nonprofit HopeLab. The terms of the sale were undisclosed.
The Zamzee platform, which combines colorful clip-on activity trackers with a gamified, anonymous social network to...
Palo Alto, California-based Kurbo Health, which is developing a mobile-enabled program aimed at preventing childhood obesity, announced that it plans to monetize the program as a subscription-based service that will help teach kids and their families to eat healthier. The company made the announcement at a recent TechCrunch event. The company has raised $1.8 million in seed funding to date from...
Last year, UnitedHealthcare announced a partnership with Konami to bring the classroom version of its DanceDanceRevolution exergame to a pilot group of schoolchildren in Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Now UnitedHealthcare is continuing that pilot, adding a fourth school in Southern California. The company is also starting a new pilot with another big name in the kids' digital health space -- social...
Zamzee, the commercial spin-off of Redwood City, California-based HopeLab, is launching a new version of its kids' activity tracker and gamified fitness platform geared at large groups, particularly clinical settings such as pediatric weight loss clinics.
HopeLab established much of the efficacy data on Zamzee in group settings. For instance, a study published last year showed that overweight...
During the last few years health insurance companies have shifted from an employer-focused mindset to one that is increasingly consumer-, member-, or individual-focused. The move toward consumer engagement, Cigna's Director of IT Strategy and Innovation Willis Gee told MobiHealthNews, is being driven by cost and quality pressures, new benefits models and growing information intensity.
Nearly all...
Rewards badges from Zamzee
The Health Resources and Services Administration at HHS is working on a new texting initiative, based on the successful public health texting initiative Text4Baby, called TXT4Tots. The department is soliciting via the Federal Registry for ways to distribute their library of text messages designed to promote wellness, nutrition and exercise for parents of children under...
Ben Sawyer
Motivating behavior change has long been one of the biggest challenges and opportunities in mobile health. One avenue for addressing that challenge is to take lessons from a field that doesn't suffer from any engagement problems: gaming. For the first year, the mHealth Summit 2012 featured a Games for Health pavilion, focused on companies using games and the lessons learned from...
Getting people to embrace motivational gaming for health and fitness may be a struggle, but some new data suggest that the concept works well when used properly.
Results of a study presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the Obesity Society in San Antonio, Texas, found that 59 percent of adolescents using Zamzee, an activity meter that resembles a USB drive, had higher levels of physical...
As the space for fitness apps continues to grow, app developers need to innovate to gain users. While many apps include an in-app award component, Nexercise, a free iOS app that's the subject of a recent Reuters article, aims to incentivize users with real world products including gift cards, coupons, and vitamin supplements.
Using the app, users track their fitness activities, which can range...
