GigaOM » mobile healthcare

Priceline for health? PokitDok launches on mobile

Ki Mae Heussner — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 21:18:48 +0000

Comparison shopping is commonplace when it comes to buying airplane tickets, electronics and other big ticket items. But a growing number of startups are trying to make it easier to bring that practice – and mentality — to healthcare.

One of the newer cost-conscious startups, PokitDok, launched a mobile app this week that lets consumers search for providers in their area, compare options and even attempt to name their own price.

As my colleague Om Malik tweeted this morning, it’s not so unlike a “Priceline for health” that lets you get quotes directly from providers in search of one that matches your budget.

“Not everyone is going to give you what you want,” said co-founder and CEO Lisa Maki. “But just like on Priceline, [consumers] can get a little more information and providers, in a secure channel, may be willing to give you a better price.”

Launched by Maki after her own frustrating experience with the healthcare system, PokitDok provides a web-based community and marketplace for health and wellness. On the site, people can communicate directly with physicians, personal trainers, massage therapists and other specialists, as well as purchase health products and treatments. In July, it opened in beta and raised $1.3 million in seed funding.

Search for providers, name your price

The app released this week is intended to complement the website, Maki said, and give people an on-the-go way to search for local providers and get prices.

Say you want to find an acupuncturist in San Francisco, through Pokitdok you can scroll through a list of practices and request a quote by indicating your budget, payment method, your health needs and the kind of practioner you’re looking for. Within 72 hours, PokitDok said, providers will respond with a price.

As of now, PokitDok’s community includes one million health and wellness providers nationwide, some of which have opted-in directly to the site and some of which are listed thanks to a licensing deal with a secure database of national physicians and healthcare practioners. The company declined to share its number of users but said they’ve seen strong, organic growth from consumers nationwide. Given the newness of the app, early downloaders won’t see many reviews left by other users but as more consumers join the marketplace, Maki said, the goal is for users to not only benefit from the price quotes but the information provided by peers.

Startups bring comparison shopping to health

As healthcare costs climb and employers increasingly shift to high-deductible health plans to keep their own costs down, Maki said PokitDok is intended to give consumers a way to find the cheapest prices. Those with high-deductible plans or no insurance at all stand to benefit the most from a financial perspective, but even those with insurance and lower-deductibles could be helped as well.

On the provider side, she said, many doctors are willing to give patients better deals if they’re paying out of pocket or through an HSA (health savings account) or FSA (flexible spending account). PokitDok helps them overcome the challenge of finding those patients.

It’s not the only startup trying to bring transparency to the black box of healthcare expenses and the growth in these kinds of companies is obviously a boon to consumers. HealthInReach is another direct to consumer site that lets people search for providers and find online deals for services. It targets the uninsured and those paying out of pocket and negotiates deals with the providers. Castlight Health and ClearCostHealth are a couple of other comparison shopping services for healthcare made available to patients through their employers.

Since raising its seed round this summer, Maki said PokitDok’s team has grown to include 11 full-time staffers, including Eric Baily, the former creative director for the healthcare practice at Frog Design and Bryan Smith, who previously served as senior data scientist for Idle Games.

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How the Eatery app will use its healthy helping of data

Colleen Taylor — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:02:12 +0000

Massive Health, the San Francisco startup aimed at tackling health care problems with innovative mobile apps, launched its first iPhone app called Eatery on Tuesday of this week. In the 48 hours since then, the company has been hit with a flood of data about where and what people eat — and Massive Health Co-Founder Aza Raskin is already pretty pumped about what they can do with it.

First, the basics: The Eatery app lets you snap photos of your food each time you eat, and self-rate how healthy each snack and meal is on a scale from “Fit” to “Fat.” The app also lets you share your meal data with others and encourage them to rate and comment on the healthfulness of your eating habits.

In the two days since the app debuted in the Apple App Store, Eatery has already received ratings on more than 200,000 meals, Raskin tells us, which means the company already has a big data set on what, when and how people are eating. And though on the surface Eatery seems like a fun and simple app, there’s serious potential that comes with it, Raskin says:

“We can take all this data and make it actionable. Want to know where to go for a healthy meal? With people from around the world rating meals, it turns out that we have some data that nobody else has.”

Not surprisingly, the app has proven especially popular in San Francisco and New York, two densely populated cities with a critical mass of iPhone users, early adopters and health-conscious people to whom Eatery should especially appeal. Massive Health has made two heatmaps to represent data the Eatery app has compiled so far in these cities:

Eatery app data in NYC (click to enlarge)

Eatery app data in SF (click to enlarge)

It’s cool to see Massive Health already forming strategies to use the data it is amassing. Often startups focus all their attention on attracting users and meeting their immediate needs, and worry about processing all the valuable information they collect much later — if they get around to it at all. Massive Health’s behavior makes sense, though, in light of the fact that the company has been backed by folks known for both deep pockets and deep interest in big picture ideas: Its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Discovery Fund, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Felicis VC and Charles River Ventures. It will be interesting to see how Massive Health moves forward with Eatery, and what apps come from the company in the future.

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TechStars Boston Demo Day highlights health start-ups

Ryan Kim — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:14:27 +0000

TechStars’ Boston class came of age today at their demo day, capping off a frenzied three-month program that has produced a strong, more business-focused class that was especially memorable for its health component.

I really enjoyed all of the dozen start-ups in the 2011 class, and it’s hard to see a clunker in the bunch. But I was drawn to the health start-ups that applied technology in different ways to improve both physical and mental health. It’s an area that is growing, especially as companies look to leverage technology to get at some persistent problems. And it’s a worthwhile field, because it affects many people on a personal level.

Katie Rae, managing director of the Boston class, said the latest crop reflected some of the local strengths of the Boston area, which has produced a lot of health tech companies, as well as B2B startups. ”Boston has an unbelievable health IT community and has deep roots in B2B,” she said. “I picked these companies partly because we can support them here with great mentors and great investors.”

Here’s a look at some of the companies that caught my eye:

Strohl Medical CEO and founder Heather Keith

Strohl Medical Technologies has come up with product that helps hospitals and emergency responders quickly detect if a patient is having a stroke. The portable device monitors a patient’s brain activity and their hearing, and has electrodes for a person’s wrists and knees. Within five to 10 minutes, the device can determine with more than 90-percent accuracy whether someone is having a stroke by looking at different signals including brain activity.

“We improve stroke triage; it’s exactly what the EKG did for heart attacks,” said Heather Keith, CEO and founder.

Keith said most stroke victims can be treated effectively with a drug called tPA, but it needs to be administered within four hours. By using Strohl Medical’s device, emergency room doctors or ambulance personnel can quickly understand how serious a patient’s condition is and get them on tPA in time to reverse the effects of most strokes. There are about 800,000 strokes a year, but only 32,000 patients were given tPA in time last year. Strohl Medical is licensing intellectual property from Tufts University and is selling the disposable kits for $250 each to hospitals. It should go on sale this October, pending FDA approval.

Hospitals all have EKG monitors and if the Stroh Medical can execute and provide the stroke equivalent, it’s something that should sell pretty easily.

Spill CEO and Founder Heidi Allstop

Spill is an anonymous peer-to-peer support system that helps students and potentially corporate workers get attention, encouragement and information on resources from other peers. The system, which was first launched by founder Heidi Allstop at the University of Wisconsin, allows users to log in to Spill with a school address and spill their guts about what they’re going through. Spill recruits a group of first responders at a particular school who reply to their fellow students within 24 hours and give them resources to turn to. Spill provides training material for the first responders and monitors their communications with users to ensure quality and also collect data on the interactions. It can set up a Spill service at a school for about $12,000 a year, then sell a school the data on what issues are cropping up among their student body for another $10,000 annually.

Allstop got the idea after struggling to settle into the University of Wisconsin and finding out it took two weeks to schedule an appointment with a counselor. She said 80 percent of student don’t avail themselves of counselors anyway, and one in four end up dropping out of school, which ends up costing colleges money. And it can save lives; Allstop said Spill has saved eight lives since it began.

The program is working at 10 colleges now, and Spill is looking to sign up 25 more with funding from investors. She said at least one Fortune 500 has contacted her about setting up a similar program for employees.

There are still some questions I have about liability and privacy, but I think a system like this makes sense. It leverages people going through similar situations to produce timely responses and delivers good resources to users. There would still be a need for counselors and other professionals, but just having someone there to respond to concerns and provide a stressed out, depressed or suicidal student or worker with immediate information can be a huge help.

GINGER.io is tackling health by leveraging mobile phones and turning them into portable sensors. The company’s application, which will be distributed to users through health providers, pharmaceutical companies and others, gathers implicit data like location and the frequency of communications and combines that with explicit data gathered from users about their condition. Users can enter the data when they have a health episode or they can respond to notifications from GINGER.io or a health provider.

What GINGER.io does is take all the data it receives and analyzes it to understand if a person is suffering from a problem. It can also predict when someone might encounter a health issue. That can be an occasion to provide them or their friends and family with suggestions or recommendations. Health providers and pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars trying to understand how patients are doing and how they’re responding to medicine. But most patients aren’t good about filling in journals and surveys and accurately reporting their symptoms back to health providers.

“We’re at the cusp of transformation in health care,” said co-founder Anmol Madan. “We’re going from a model of going to a doctor and getting a prescription to a device and sensor that allows you to live healthy lives.”

We’ve talked about the growing importance of mobile devices in improving health, but it’s still an area that needs more innovation and investment and I’m glad to see GINGER.io moving in this direction.

Promoboxx caught my eye because it helps brands and local retailers come together to more effectively market to users. The idea is that national brands are trying to strike up relationships with consumers and so are their retail partners. What Promoboxx does is provide a platform for the two parties to come together to build unique campaigns around specific products and retail locations that can hit both of their audiences and fans.

Promoboxx’s platform allows a brand to start an online marketing campaign for Facebook, Twitter or through email or their website. They can then generate a local promotion that it can share with a particular retailer that is unique for that location. Then both of them can hit up their respective audiences and combine their efforts, rather than working separately.

Ben Carcio, Promoboxx’s CEO and founder, said by combining the power of a national brand the loyalty of local retail customers, it can increase e-mail leads and Facebook likes by 500 percent and can achieve a 24 percent conversion rate on sales. He said while brands are the initial target, local retailers can also use the platform for their outreach.

I like this because it just makes sense. Many brands are pushing social and online campaigns but they’re not effectively enlisting the help of their best advocates, their own retailers. And retailers can get better reach by working with their manufacturers.

Memrise is promising because it is taking the task of learning languages and making it fun and memorable. The start-up uses vivid encoding techniques like visual tools and mnemonic devices to help build up a user’s vocabulary.

For example, users can get cartoons and animations that help visualize Mandarin characters and attach them to accurate definitions. The company choreographs the way it serves up new words to ensure people keep learning and reviewing words that are more troublesome then it schedules reminders to encourage users to review words so they’re not forgotten. Memrise actually leverages some of the same social gaming tools in Farmville to get people to keep memorizing before their memories fade away like crops in a game.

Memrise’s Ed Cooke said by blending art and science, Memrise can help users memorize an average of 27 words an hour, well above the average rate of three an hour. Memrise began with Mandarin, but it’s expanding to dozen of languages with the help of users, who are contributing their own words and definitions and “mems”, the unique word/visual aid combinations. Cooke said Memrise is looking beyond language and believes this model can be used for all sorts of online learning.

I just like the idea of using clever techniques to help people learn languages. We don’t all learn the same way, but tapping visual and social tools seems like a smart way to expand language acquisition.

This was a strong class and saw a lot of great start-ups taking down real problems. Combined with the recent New York class, TechStars is showing that it’s still got plenty of mojo in accelerating start-ups.

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Home Health Monitoring is Big Business

James Kendrick — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:55:31 +0000

Remote health monitoring generated €7.6 billion ($10.01 billion USD) globally in 2010, an amount destined to grow as this nascent area of healthcare is used more heavily in the future. Chronic health conditions such as diabetes, cardiac conditions and asthma are successfully treated with home monitoring using mobile technology, according to a research report by Berg Insight.

Home healthcare is becoming a cost-effective option for treating chronic health conditions, due to advancements in mobile healthcare (mHealth) technology. Simple monitors connect the patient at home with medical facilities using mobile networks. Healthcare providers can monitor patients in real-time anywhere a mobile connection is available. Caring for the patient at home provides a better environment for the patient, and an effective use of healthcare facilities.

Smartphone apps are beginning to play a role in home healthcare, and such usage should continue to evolve as long as regulating authorities stay out of the way. The benefits gained by such apps are already coming to the attention of the healthcare industry, and with big money in the pot as evidenced by the Berg report, third-party development of such apps should continue. Home health monitoring is an exciting use of mobile technology, and practice should grow as mobile networks become more prevalent worldwide.

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Study: FDA Hampering Technology in Healthcare

James Kendrick — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:30:18 +0000

FDA Claimed times in red, actual in blue, EU times in green

Mobile healthcare is poised for major progress through incorporating technology, but a new study shows the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is negatively impacting this process in general. Companies trying to leverage technology in healthcare are finding that once the FDA gets involved, it becomes a time-consuming, expensive process. Many companies are heading to Europe to develop medical technology, due to a regulatory climate more conducive for such efforts.

The study deals with technology in healthcare in general, but the findings impact mobile in particular, as it’s totally technology based. The FDA creates such a barrier to bringing technology into healthcare that the financial implications are disturbing. The cost of bringing simple technology (such as mobile devices) to use in healthcare is $31 million, a staggering $24 million of which is incurred dealing with the FDA. When looking at more complex technology, the FDA costs companies a whopping $75 million out of the total $94 million to bring it to market. It is no wonder companies are fleeing the reach of the FDA.

The advancement of technology used in mobile healthcare is already impacted by the rapid evolution of mobile technology compared with the slow pace of the medical field. When you add the FDA effect into the mix, it becomes almost impossible to get new tech into practice in a timely fashion. The study found that getting new “simple” gadgets to market takes only seven months in Europe, but an average of 31 months in the U.S. due to the involvement of the FDA. Such technology is available for patients in Europe years before it hits the U.S., and strictly due to the FDA effect.

The FDA reaches into all areas of mobile healthcare advancement, even the development of smartphone apps as we discovered. It’s one thing to protect consumers from technology that doesn’t work, but quite another to consistently get in the way of progress. At what point do American companies working on this technology just pack it up and head to Europe?

Image credits: Flickr user HazPhotos and nvca.org

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Medical Minder Allows Treatment at Home Over 3G

James Kendrick — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:00:23 +0000

The healthcare segment is embracing the benefits of mobile technology, as evidenced in the new Minder device by Cambridge Consultants. The Minder uses 3G technology to allow healthcare professionals to monitor patient vital signs remotely. The patient gets the benefit of being at home, as caregivers can record diagnostics like blood pressure from the clinic in real-time.

The Minder works with the Vena line of diagnostic equipment from Cambridge, such as a blood pressure monitor. The healthcare provider sees the diagnostic as it’s run, and can take appropriate action should the results be alarming. The clinician sends instructions to the patient over the Minder in that situation to ensure care is appropriate. The patient benefits from a more comfortable environment during the monitoring, and cost benefits are tremendous over hospitalization.

Wireless technology is also making big strides towards exposing patients that would otherwise have no care available — such as those in remote areas — to modern care benefits. The adoption of mobile technology in the healthcare space is just getting started, but devices like the Minder can make remote care a reality for those who need it most.

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Keep an Ear on Elderly Parents With Sonamba

James Kendrick — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:00:39 +0000

Making sure elderly parents living alone are all right is now easier for family members with the release of the Sonamba monitoring system. Sonamba is a 7-inch digital picture frame that monitors motion and sound in the surrounding area to determine if the elderly resident is in distress. What sets Sonamba apart from similar gadgets is that it compares the real-time activity with historical levels it has recorded so that unusual situations are immediately apparent. The integrated 3G connectivity kicks in at those times and sends alerts to caregivers.

The main unit supplied with Sonamba is the touch panel device that can be set to display a slide show of photos. This panel senses sound and motion in the immediate area, and the kit has a mobile panic button the elderly can press to summon aid. The system can also be configured to give notices when it’s time to take medications. Sonamba creates a private social network that allows caregivers, family members and the monitored individuals to communicate at will, useful if the elderly are not connected to the web via other methods.

The Sonamba system can be accessed and controlled remotely through an iPhone app designed to make it easy to maintain. This app allows configuration of the alerts, such as text messages sent to caregivers when something is amiss at the elderly person’s home. Personal photos can be uploaded to the Sonamba system for the enjoyment of the system owner. The system starts at $459.99, and requires a monthly monitoring fee starting at $30.

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mHealth Summit Update — Organizations Stepping Up

James Kendrick — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:00:23 +0000

The mHealth Summit is winding down in Washington, D.C., and the mobile healthcare initiative gained some financial backing as major organizations have announced donations to help advance mobile healthcare. HP, Qualcomm, the Rockefeller Foundation and Norwegian agency Norad are joining the effort to better utilize mobile technology in the global distribution of better healthcare.

Three donations of $1 million each are being made to the mHealth Alliance, an organization promoting the delivery of quality healthcare in remote areas through the use of wireless technology. HP, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) are making the donations independently to provide core funding to the Alliance. Some of the donated funds will help operate the Maternal mHealth Initiative, a program designed to reduce maternal and infant mortality in developing countries. The Rockefeller Foundation, along with the United Nations Foundation and Vodafone Foundation, founded the mHealth Alliance in 2009.

In related news, the Mobile Health Information System has been announced by Qualcomm to bring crucial medical information to remote healthcare providers in South Africa through the use of devices using 3G connectivity. The project is also training nurses to use supplied smartphones to access medical databases for the treatment of complex cases.

Image credit: Flickr user US Army Africa

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Mobile Healthcare Has Ills, But the Prognosis Is Good

James Kendrick — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:51:49 +0000

Mobile technology has the potential to make a huge contribution for advancements in global healthcare, but incorporating it isn’t without significant challenges. The mHealth Summit is currently underway in Washington, D.C., where healthcare experts have come together to address these challenges and determine the best courses of action to put the technology to good use.

Properly using mobile technology in global healthcare has three immediate benefits: bringing medical consultation to remote patients, allowing professionals to monitor patients remotely and making patient information universally available to the healthcare system. Patients in developing countries often have little or no access to adequate healthcare, and the global proliferation of mobile phones makes it possible for providers to make initial consultations remotely.

A trial in India is providing initial medical consultation to those living in remote areas currently without local medical care via mobile phone for the equivalent of a dollar. The trial illustrates one of the challenges medical researchers have in putting mobile technology to use for better healthcare. Researchers must rely on third parties, such as handset manufacturers or network operators, as partners, since those companies own the networks and provide the devices. Those same partners want to lock the researchers into their networks or gear with exclusive deals, shutting out options the healthcare professionals want to try. The Indian trial involves exclusive participation of one mobile operator, but in this instance, the company’s 47 million customers are sufficient to produce good results. That’s not always the case, which is one reason why exclusive partnerships can hinder researchers.

However, the biggest challenge in bringing mobile technology to healthcare is the rapid pace of technology advancement compared with the plodding nature of medical trials to test the technology. It’s standard for such trials to take five years, during which technology can leapfrog ahead, rendering the approved devices moot. To put the timeframe in perspective, five years ago, the smartphone didn’t exist. Medical trials started just a few years ago are not addressing the appearance of the iPhone and Android, two major factors in the evolution of smartphone technology. Researchers must speed up medical trials involving rapidly evolving technology, without compromising the objectives of such trials.

Smartphone technology is already being used for remote patient monitoring in the U.S., as we recently reported. This type of mobile healthcare needs to spread globally, a challenge in developing countries where smartphone adoption is lagging. The appearance of low-cost smartphones should help put them in more hands and kick-start the use of such mobile technology.

While mobile platforms (Android, iOS, etc.) are major players in the mobile technology segment, they are not as important to healthcare research as the cloud. Access to medical information online is driving medical uses, since it can provide global access to patient records in a scalable fashion. While local medical uses don’t require large storage capacity, such capacity is necessary for healthcare on a global scale. A key ingredient to improving global healthcare is developing standards for medical records that can be accessed by professionals treating patients both locally and remotely. This brings privacy and security concerns to the forefront, and the healthcare industry is trying to work through these significant issues.

The mHealth Summit will be running for another two days, and we’ll be monitoring activities for important information. Mobile technology has the potential to provide a significant step forward in global medical care, but the challenges are formidable.

Image credit: Flickr user US Army Africa

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Mobile Security and the Internet of Things

Colin Gibbs — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:00:11 +0000

The dawning age of the “Internet of things” will see connectivity come to a wide variety of gadgets and services. Of course, that surge of new devices will usher in an unpredented wave of security concerns. But as I write in my weekly column over at GigaOM Pro, that means big opportunities for vendors of mobile security who have yet to see huge demand for their smartphone offerings.

Security concerns are nothing new to mobile, thanks largely to FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) s0wn by vendors hawking security wares. But even the most dangerous mobile security threats thus far have been fairly innocuous in scale, from the earliest Symbian worms to “the budding dark side” of smartphone applications.

But we’re beginning to see the emergence of connected devices other than smartphones that present a higher set of risks when it comes to being hacked, and therefore call for iron-clad security measures.

For instance, last week, researchers from Rutgers University and the University of South Carolina demonstrated that wireless tire pressure monitors — which have been mandatory for new cars sold in the U.S. for the last two years – can be hacked. That study mirrored a similar effort from a few months ago that proved electronic control units themselves can be easily broken into, giving potential hackers access to a number of horrifying functions, from turning on windshield wipers to virtually punching the accelerator. The coming wave of connected healthcare gadgets and smart grid systems is sure to attract attention from hackers.

Those threats also present limitless opportunities for developers of mobile security who’ve been trying to put out fires that barely exist in today’s wireless world. Taking advantage of those opportunities will require different strategies, of course, but for forward-thinking players in the mobile-security game, it’s time to check out the world of M2M and stop crying “Wolf!” every time a questionable piece of malware makes its way onto a smartphone.

Read the full post here.

Image courtesy Flickr user dheuer.