I was at MDRevolution’s La Jolla, Calif., office about a month ago, sitting in on a consultation as a patient huffed away on a treadmill. A staff member hovered nearby, monitoring the patient’s heart rate and pushing her to keep up the pace. As the staff member took note after note on the patient’s performance and tapped away at a calculator and keyboard to analyze the results, I felt like I was in a research lab, not a doctor’s office — and a lab modeled after a gleaming Apple store.

According to its founder, cardiologist Samir Damani, that’s the point. The office — with its sleek, spa-like aesthetic and shelves of connected devices — is a showcase for a data-driven future of medicine that puts technology at the center of the patient experience and moves actual doctors into managerial, less visible roles.

As the era of the more-affordable “$1,000 genome” draws closer, the phrase “personalized medicine” is popping up all over the place. But for the most part, matching medical treatments with a patient’s genetic profile is an option for only the wealthiest Americans.

With his patients, Damani is trying to create customized health care that is more accessible and affordable — and he’s doing it by blending cardiology, nutrition science and genetics with emerging mobile technology. But that’s just the first step: He believes he can build a big business by using the data he’s gathering and the algorithms he’s creating to design software that will allow employers and hospitals around the country to replicate his approach.

“I got tired of people saying this is what it’s going to be like. I said, ‘I’m a 37-year-old cardiologist, I need to know what it’s going to be like today,’” said Damani, a slight, well-dressed man with a seemingly boundless memory for medical literature.

So, in 2011, he rustled up $1.6 million in angel funding from several local MDs, Ph.Ds and other supporters (no traditional “vulture capitalists” allowed). He hired an IT guy, an office manager, a metabolic specialist, nutritionist and medical assistant and, about a year later, opened up his doors — all while keeping an active cardiology practice at a local San Diego clinic.

A new medical specialty?

Since launching in February 2012, MDRevolution has worked with about 250 patients; about a quarter of them have a chronic condition, and the balance are people who are generally in good health and who are willing to take that extra step to stay that way (patients continue to see their regular primary care doctor in addition to Damani). He says that each of the last 60 patients has seen statistically significant changes in every health marker analyzed, including weight, body mass index, metabolism and visceral fat (the notoriously hard-to-lose fat that accumulates around organs).

Damani’s model? A new patient starts with a spin through a lab to determine their resting metabolic rates, visceral fat levels and other fitness indicators. They also get a genetic assessment that tells MDRevolution whether they’re a slow processor of caffeine, whether they’re genetically inclined to overeat, and whether they have any other nutrition and fitness-related predispositions. From there, the practice uses proprietary algorithms to craft personalized health plans that include guidance on things like how high and how often to push their heart rates while exercising, what kinds of food to eat, and the types of foods to avoid.

As patients follow the program, fitness trackers like Fitbits (see disclosure), wireless Withings scales and heart monitors report progress back to MDRevolution, while a website enables specialists to give encouragement and direction online.  For the genetic assessments, the company partners with Pathway Genomics and 23andMe, and it uses Qualcomm’s 2Net platform to integrate all of its technology. For the 10 percent of patients who live outside the area (and even for some who live close by), Damani conducts virtual visits via Skype.

The financial model

Just about every week, a new activity tracker, personal genome service, iPhone-based medical device or online patient program hits the market. But for the most part, those tools and services exist in isolation. MDRevolution is a first stab at trying to show how mobile health tracking tools, genomic assessments and personalized coaching can work together to show real results.

The fact that the company is based in sunny Southern California is no accident. Between wireless health leader Qualcomm Life, genetics company Pathway Genomics, The Scripps Research Institute and plenty of other National Institutes of Health-funded research institution, San Diego is a hotbed for health innovation and research. Scripps is also the academic home of Eric Topol, a longtime cardiologist and researcher as well as one of the most influential voices in digital health. Before launching MDRevolution, Damani published several peer-reviewed articles with Topol, who he said has been a mentor.

As health reform pushes medicine to a model that rewards doctors based on how well they keep patients healthy, not just the procedures they perform, more doctors are turning to concierge-style practices in which patients pay an annual retainer for a higher level of care. One Medical Group, which has offices in five cities, lets patients book appointments online and renew prescriptions as well as email with doctors. CarenaMD, in Seattle, offers patients 24/7 virtual doctor visits via webcam.

MDRevolution says its model is closer to a gym membership. Patients pay between $25 and $75 per month (depending on the level of service and attention needed) for access to the clinical lab and personnel, as well as its web-based service. The practice also takes most insurance plans, so each time patients visit the office, they’re also charged a co-pay.

Brad Lally, a 46-year-old San Diego executive with an outdoor sports company, said he decided to see Damani in 2011 after a brief episode of cardiac arrhythmia. He wanted to try treating his heart condition without drugs, and also wanted to get rid of his belly fat. In addition to putting more proteins and vegetables in his diet, MDRevolution told him to do metabolic interval training workouts twice a week to push his heart rate into the anaerobic zone. Since genetic testing revealed that he was a slow caffeine metabolizer, Damani’s team told him to stay away from evening cups of coffee.

For the next 12 months, he reported his workouts and diet to MDRevolution — even on frequent overseas business trips his blood pressure cuff sent back data — and received nearly bi-weekly feedback from staff. After three months on the program, he says he lost 10 percent of his visceral fat and increased his resting metabolic rate and VO2 level — two measures that Damani believes are more predictive of heart health than cholesterol — by more than 10 percent. It’s been a year since he finished the program, and he said he hasn’t had any heart irregularities. Even when he slips, he said, he knows how to quickly correct his diet and exercise plan.

“It’s empowering to know what’s going on,” Lally said. “And the level of interaction you get — it’s really good. It’s nothing like what you get with your regular primary care doctor because they’re so busy seeing patients.”

The real ‘billion-dollar’ business

As MDRevolution tries to help patients reach new levels of fitness and heart health, it is building a robust data set to support what Damani said could be the company’s real ‘billion-dollar’ business idea: a patient-engagement platform.

RevUp, which MDRevolution uses internally for its 250 patients, is a web-based dashboard that aggregates all of a patient’s information, from fitness trackers and other devices to genetic and other health data. It provides each patient with a personalized health plan, including custom fitness and nutrition guidelines depending on their needs and goals. Physicians and other health experts can use it to track patient progress and send updates and guidance. Corporate and health system administrators are able to see what employees are doing in aggregate but not an individuals’ specific information.

According to a recent study from human resources company Aon Hewitt, the average employer spends about 40 percent more on health care now than it did six years ago. Another report found that poor health costs the U.S. economy $576 billion annually, with nearly 40 percent of that due to employee absenteeism or low productivity.

To address those issues, companies like Keas, Healthrageous and ShapeUp pitch employers on corporate wellness programs that integrate with digital devices to keep employees active, healthy and out of the doctor’s office. Damani argues that RevUp will have an edge in this market because its program is backed by clinical results.

He says the data that he’s compiling with just 250 patients is already leading to fresh insights. For example, he said, people can increase their heart and lung capacity independent of age, and women increase oxygen consumption (an indicator of fitness) slower than men. When the company reaches 1,000 patients, he believes, their research could be used to influence public debate about how to maintain health in the population at large.

“Our competitive advantage is that we have a lab driving the software. We’re always going to be creating software based on needs for the practice and outcomes,” Damani says. He says that while other corporate wellness programs tend to only focus on basic health markers like cholesterol and body mass index, the indicators underpinning his program (resting metabolic rates, visceral fat levels and oxygen consumption) will prove to be the key to preventative medicine.

Can MDRevolution compete against tech companies?

The ultimate plan is for the dashboard to serve as a vehicle for gathering even more data, he said; creating a repository that could be a licensable asset in itself. It could also inform the development of future products or make MDRevolution a valuable partner for companies developing medical devices or conducting clinical trials, he said.

With a doctorate, a master’s degree and a medical degree, Damani is clearly not one to shy away from a new challenge. But in turning MDRevolution into a technology company, he’s moving into an uncertain and increasingly competitive terrain. While Damani has led the company so far — he said it has already signed up four corporate customers, a mix of companies and hospital systems, and should be profitable by next year — running a doctor’s office arguably requires a different kind of skill set than building a technology company. The company now employs 15 people, but only the COO, CTO and a new database manager have technical backgrounds. Six contractors work full-time on its software development, and Damani said he plans to bring several programmers in-house in the next year.

Damani may find that the market for his data isn’t what he anticipated. Abhas Gupta, a partner at venture firm Mohr Davidow Partners who focuses on digital health, said that he’s seen promising health startups that have amassed strong and unique datasets but that haven’t been able to generate revenue like they expected. “Who do you sell that data to?” he asked. “There may not be individuals ready to do something with that data.”

The new role for doctors in a tech-driven world

One thing patients at MDRevolution don’t see much of is a doctor. The practice is still small enough that patients know Damani oversees the entire operation but he has delegated much of the day-to-day interacting to patients to metabolic experts and nurse practitioners. Even though the office sees patients five days a week, his face time with them is just five to eight hours weekly. He says MDRevolutions in other locations could operate with barely any doctor oversight at all. (To bill as a doctor’s office, they will need to be led by doctor, but day-to-day operations could be entirely run by a nurse practitioner, he said.)

It makes you wonder if Vinod Khosla’s controversial prediction that technology will replace 80 percent of medical experts is coming true. Damani said his vision isn’t one that minimizes doctors (although the impending doctor shortage means the country will have to make do with fewer doctors, relatively speaking) or one where doctors play CEO and tech entrepreneur. But it is a world where physicians will have to adapt.

“Physicians are going to have to be in a management role as opposed to being the primary person seeing [patients],” he said. “Most physicians out there are unhappy. Because cost-containment pressures are so great, they’ve become assembly-line type physicians who see as many patients as possible in as little time as possible. I want to offer those doctors a new process.”

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013

Since launching in 2011, the startup has provided those features through its website, but by bringing them to mobile, Simplee wants to help patients make decisions and negotiate payments at the point of service. “[In most cases], you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time when you get the information,” said John Adractas, Simplee’s CMO. “Mobile… gives you the information when it matters, when you’re standing in the doctor’s office, when you’re making decisions.”

As an example, Evelyn Wang, Simplee’s director of design, said that when she went in for knee surgery earlier this year, the hospital tried to collect payment upfront. But because she could reference her payment history from Simplee’s app, she knew she had already met her deductible and could show the hospital that their information was out-of-date. Ultimately, she said she was able to push back and didn’t over-pay.

Obviously, the app won’t come to the rescue for every patient in such a clear way. But as a Simplee user, I can see the benefits in being able to review and pay my medical bills from my smartphone in the same way I can check my bank balance and make other payments on the go.

Simplee said that its new app would integrate with its SimpleePAY patient and loyalty service, which enables participating health care providers to issue digital bills.  Patients can pay directly via app, as well as earn loyalty rewards for using it.

The company, which has raised nearly $8 million, says its average active user pays an average of $1,200 in medical bills annually and uses the service 15 times a year. Over the past two years, it said its handled nearly $2 billion in medical expenses for its users.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013
• Podcast: Mobile winners and losers in 2012 and what to expect in 2013

Ribbon is one of several payments startups drawing new attention that is focused on one thing: removing the irritating qualities that come with purchasing things online. We’ve written about Ribbon before, namely how the company wants to let people make purchases just by clicking a link. And on Wednesday, the company plans to announce an even simpler way to buy: through Twitter.

Users on Twitter who come across merchants selling items through Ribbon will be able to tap the tweet to expand and complete a purchase without ever leaving Twitter. Ribbon had previously optimized its links so that users could purchase items through both Twitter and Facebook, but recent updates to Twitter’s Cards technology will extend this capability even further.

The idea? “Let’s just keep the buyer where they already are,” CEO and co-founder Hany Rashwan told me. “It’s a one-page check-out.”

In a demonstration, Rashwan showed me how to tap a tweet with a Ribbon link embedded, enter my credit card information, and hit purchase, all without leaving the expanded tweet. He said they’re working on improving the service so that once users make a purchase on Ribbon through Twitter, they won’t have to enter their credit card information a second time.

“We’re utilizing a part of the new cards technology,” noting that the company has also been supporting in-stream purchases on Facebook for a few months, and that the company has “tens of thousands” of merchants selling, although he would not disclose specific numbers.

As we wrote previously, Angelpad alum Ribbon has built its own payment system that lets it avoid fees and sets it apart from competitors, many of which use companies like PayPal or Stripe for credit card processing. The company is also updating its fees for merchants selling through Ribbon — it will now charge 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction, rather than the previous 5 percent plus $0.30 per transaction.

As we watch apps like Ribbon start to incorporate payments into Twitter’s stream, it’s easy to see why Twitter would want to expand the different types of Cards technology it offers, and how the company might start to allow transactions like Ribbon payments to happen on the site — potentially benefiting both Twitter and the payments companies.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated

In Sub-Saharan Africa, one million lives could be saved over the next five years with mobile health initiatives that help patients stick to their treatment plans and access information, as well as aid workers in monitoring the available of medication and follow treatment guidelines, according to the report. For example the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) enables health care workers and pregnant women to share health information via SMS; TxtAlert in South Africa helps HIV patients and healthcare workers comply with Anti Retroviral Therapy programs, cutting missed appointment rates from 27 percent to 4 percent, the report says.

In developed countries, as we’ve reported, mobile health can also lead to positive outcomes. In 2017, the report says, mobile health could cut health care costs in developed countries by more than $400 billion.

Considering that the GSMA represents the interests of the mobile technology industry, it’s no surprise that the report touts its potential social benefits. And there are obviously challenges to mobile health’s progress, from regulatory concerns to the expense and time commitment needed to implement new systems to culture clashes between the medical and technology communities to confidentiality questions. But as doctor shortages mount and hospitals face new mandates related to accountability and electronic records, many in the industry are looking to mobile devices, applications and other programs to improve patient care, lower costs and drive efficiency. (At GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in March, we’ll uncover more about how big data can improve patient care and lower costs in a panel discussion with  Aetna’s head of innovation.)

Here are four ways mobile health could help cut costs:

Mobile care for sudden health incidents

As telehealth grows – a recent report estimated it could grow by 55 percent this year alone – mobile-based services could become more common in helping with immediate care. The GSMA and PwC report estimates that mobile-based care for patients with sudden health incidents could reduce primary and emergency care visits by 10 percent. Already, companies like Sherpaa and Ringadoc let patients reach physicians 24/7 by phone, text or email.

Remote patient home monitoring

In non-emergency situations, mobile technology could also play a role in helping doctors keep tabs on elderly or recently discharged patients remotely. With Sotera Wireless, for example, doctors can monitor patients’ blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate and other indicators through a flip-phone-sized device worn on a patient’s wrist. GSMA and PwC estimate that remote monitoring technology could lead to elderly care savings of up to 25 percent and improve patients’ quality of life.

Mobile access to electronic health records

As more hospitals migrate to electronic medical records (EMR), patient information will increasingly be captured and accessed from mobile devices. PatientSafe, for example, plugs into several EMR systems and lets doctors and nurses log patient information (like temperature, blood pressure, etc.) and manage other workflow tasks from a souped-up iPod Touch.  According to PwC and GSMA, mobile access to electronic health records could lower the administrative burden on hospitals by 20 to 30 percent.

SMS reminders for scheduling appointments (and taking medication)

The old SMS could also play a bigger role in reducing health costs and improving patient care. Appointment reminder services, like that offered by Kaiser Permanente, have been shown to reduce costs and boost patient attendance. Companies like Blueprint Health’s AllazoHealth and AdhereTech use SMS (and other kinds of communication) to remind patients to take their medication after sensors or algorithms note when a patient hasn’t taken medication or is likely to skip it.

Image by  iadams via Shutterstock.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

That point was driven home yesterday during a Social Media Week panel I moderated on How Behavior and Patients Can Fix Health Care.  I was chatting with three health tech entrepreneurs, Dr. Jay Parkinson, co-founder of Sherpaa; Unity Stoakes, co-founder of Startup Health; and Derek Flanzraich, founder of Greatist, about how they and their organizations are changing health care, when one of the audience members commented that the conversation felt too “self-referential” and asked how to close the behavior gap in health technology. (You can see the whole discussion here.)

It was an entirely fair question – and one that I hope all health technologists ask themselves regularly. While technology, especially mobile devices, is more ubiquitous than ever, there are still disparities in broadband access, availability of digital tools and information about new services. The Pew Internet & American Life Project, for example, reports that Latinos (55 percent) and African-Americans (58 percent) are less likely than Whites (75 percent) to have a home Internet connection. Not surprisingly, Pew also says that those with more education and higher incomes are also more likely to go online for health care information – 78 percent of those who earn more than $75,000 vs. 45 percent of those who earn less than $30,000.

Keep early adopters happy, let them help spread the word

On the panel, Dr. Parkinson said that Sherpaa, which works through employers to provide 24/7 access to doctors via email and phone, targets companies like Tumblr and General Assembly because “you have to start with people that get it.”

“If Facebook or the iPhone started marketing to my parents first they wouldn’t have taken off,” he said. The economics of healthcare is slow (especially relative to the pace of technology) because it’s defined by the government, but by keeping early adopters happy and buzzing about their experiences with Sherpaa, he said he hopes they can gradually educate more and change the system.

Another way to bring the masses into the new health movement is by making it more accessible and relatable through trusted brands, said Flanzraich. In the last year, Greatist, a health and fitness content site that’s part Buzzfeed, part fitness magazine and part health journal, has seen its traffic climb sixfold to just under three million unique visitors. And he said those users, who are mostly from outside early adopter hubs New York and San Francisco, are drawn in because the site connects important health news to pop culture and other topics people already want to read about.

I also added that employers play an important role in bringing health technology to a wider audience. Using Fitbits and Nike Fuelbands that track activity and calories burned may seem like naval-gazing to non-techies, but they could start to mean more if employers reward people for activities logged on those devices, for example, with health insurance discounts or FSA (flexible spending account) credits. At first, it may be the more tech-forward employers that see the value in programs like this. But if companies like employee wellness startup Keas can show employers cost savings, devices that motivate behavior change could matter to even more populations.

Report: Better data collection could pinpoint and address disparities

As technology proliferates, innovation is also spreading organically into different corners of the world, noted Stoakes. For example, SMS-based efforts are enabling drug authentication in Africa and boosting immunization rates in India.

However, in the U.S., even though early adopter patients and doctors will lead the way, health innovators and policymakers can do more to bridge knowledge and behavior gaps. (At GigaOM’s Structure:Data conference in March, I’ll be speaking with Aetna’s head of innovation about how big data can improve patient care and lower costs.) A report  presented at a White House Summit on “ehealth equity” this week outlines a few ways to do that. Written by consumer groups The Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, the Consumer Union and the National Council of La Raza, it offers several recommendations on how health information technology could reduce imbalances in care, particularly in communities of color, limited English proficient groups and immigrants and mixed-status families.

For example, it suggests capitalizing on mobile technology, designing web sites that consider differences in culture and health literacy and developing outreach strategies specifically targeting the underserved.

One area in health IT that could lead to particularly positive improvements is data collection and analysis, the report says.  Although it emphasized security to prevent the misuse of data, the report says better demographic information could help identify disparities and lead to services that more appropriately consider linguistic or other cultural needs.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• The quantified self: hacking the body for better health
• Flash analysis: future opportunities for Pinterest

As a result, CIOs, business strategists and IT leaders are working furiously to make sure their businesses have plans in place to stay ahead of these challenges. But there is one subtlety that is frequently overlooked: When it comes to mobile computing, big data and the cloud, what we have is not three problems but one.

Rising in unison

It’s not a coincidence that the profile of these three business challenges rose in parallel. Mobile, big data, and cloud are not siloed concerns easily addressed in isolation. They exist in an overlapping matrix, where the importance of each issue increases because it leverages (or helps solve) an issue raised by one of the others.

For example, in the days before mobile computing, business users typically did all their work using just a handful of applications. Today, the average smartphone has 41 apps installed on it. And each of those applications sparks a need to consider security, since it generates data each and every time it is used. And because these devices are often connected to service provider networks – rather than directly with corporate servers – a great deal of that business app data requires secure cloud storage.

Thus the proliferation of mobile devices exacerbates the big data problem, which in turn precipitates the demand for cloud.

In short, they are all part of a single, converged and symbiotic trend. And to address them optimally requires a holistic perspective on all three.

No bottom in sight

With global demand for mobile computing at the heart of this escalation, it makes sense that IT strategists would be keenly interested in the trend lines for mobile adoption. Today, 87 percent of the world’s population owns a mobile phone; 60 million Android devices were sold in the second quarter of 2012, and now 1 million new Android devices are provisioned daily, according to Google. As of last month, there were likely more smartphones on the planet than humans, according to Cisco.

So the question is whether there is a saturation point on the horizon that could help curb this cloud/mobile/data demand? Surprisingly, no. The average number of mobile devices per employee worldwide has already reached three to five, and adoption rates continue to grow as consumers add tablets and ever-more capable smartphones to their mobile arsenals.

But consumers’ ceaseless enthusiasm for new form factors and functionality is not the whole story behind the world’s bottomless demand for mobility. Today, businesses themselves – rather than consumers – are adding fuel to the fire.

Not just a BYOD issue

As industries finally crest the hump of transforming their workflows to leverage mobile device availability, they drive new demand – not only for mobile devices, but for new scalable infrastructures that deliver more actionable intelligence from their big data.

Finance Consumer banks, operators and retailers are widely deploying mobile commerce capabilities, which, in addition to automating traditional transactions, must include on-demand access to unstructured data, such as check images.

Manufacturing  Mobile devices on the factory floor automate manual processes, thereby feeding more rapid information into the system. This makes it possible to detect and respond early to issues that take a toll on quality or productivity, such as supplier errors.

Retail  Retailers are giving regional store managers mobile app access to daily and even real-time sales performance data on the floor, allowing them to optimize displays and customer service to sell more of the most popular items.

Health care Thanks to new mobile apps and devices, the details of every patient interaction is now entered into the system nearly instantaneously. This provides a basis for a more efficient and orchestrated care response, and in some cases leading to more rapid or accurate diagnoses.

The internet of things

As mobile technology embeds itself into more and more objects, vehicles, buildings, sensors and machines, the heterogeneity of actionable business information will only grow. “Annual global IP traffic will surpass the zettabyte threshold by the end of 2016,” reports Cisco. “In 2016, global IP traffic will reach 1.3 zettabytes per year or 109.5 exabytes per month.”

Smart equipment and vehicles will upload data to service provider networks as well as private networks, and organizations will need a plan to normalize data in many forms and from many sources. The scalable infrastructures we design today to store and structure such varied data are critical to the enablement of the business innovations we will need in the future.

The effect of this convergence is already apparent, especially in the area of business intelligence. Mobile business intelligence makes it possible for organizations to provide analytics on key performance metrics to a wider variety of employees – not just for executives. Once employees get a taste for how mobile apps fuel greater effectiveness in their job duties, they will push for more dashboards and more data. And these big data stores can’t be undertaken without cloud, to facilitate real-time performance, nor mobile devices and apps, to deliver data into the field where it’s put to good use.

Embracing the Entanglement

The interdependence of mobile, big data and cloud is undeniable, and will only multiply as data growth and mobile use continue. Yet our strategic thinking lags behind the evidence. As we have learned from IT revolutions of the past, a partial strategy is worse than no strategy at all, as you can end up with an inflexible, tactical implementation that requires a ‘rip and replace’ approach.

Organizations that manage to avoid a false start with a siloed strategy will create a network design better aligned with where IT will be in five years. In short, the most successful organizations recognize the secret alliance of mobile, big data and cloud early, and develop a holistic strategy considering all three in concert.

Sanjay Poonen is president and head of SAP’s mobile division. Read more of his work here, and follow him on Twitter @spoonen.

Photo courtesy of Herbert Kratky / Shutterstock.com.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• HTML5’s a Game-Changer for Web Apps

Since it’s challenging to schedule a live show that fits everyone’s schedule, this will be a recorded “call in” show. Just dial my Google Voice number, which is 262-KCTOFEL and leave a voicemail. If I pick your question, I’ll play it back during the show and answer it as best I can.

If you’re the shy types, you can also ping me with a question via email (podcast@gigaom.com), Twitter (@kevinctofel), or Google+ (
https://plus.google.com/+KevinTofel
) and I’ll read those on air. If you’d rather I didn’t use your real name in the show, be sure to let me know.

Even if you don’t have a specific question, I hope you’ll join us for this little experiment, which we’ll kick off with the premier episode on Wednesday, January 23rd. You can subscribe to the podcast via our RSS Feed through iTunes or via Stitcher Radio. And get your questions in before noon ET on Tuesday so I have time to do the show!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Updated: Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010-2015

But as a single 20-something I never assumed dating sites were really geared toward my friends and me. While most of the stigma around online dating seems to have gone away, the sites still felt like services for people in their 30s, 40s, or older. Sure, my generation is supposedly all about hook-up oriented apps and social location-based apps, but those seem to solve a different problem. Frankly, traditional online dating sounded kind of stuffy.

So I was surprised this past weekend when I logged onto Facebook and found several of my friends — all 20-somethings living in urban areas like myself — posting about Grouper, a Y Combinator-backed dating site that pairs two groups of three friends and sends them to a bar on a group date. I was surprised that I found myself thinking, “I might actually do that.”

Wisdom of the crowds

There’s nothing new about the concept of a group date, but what makes Grouper and other sites like HowAboutWe interesting is that they’re using technology in a vastly different way than traditional dating sites to tackle the problem of human chemistry. Instead of using questionnaires and databases to figure out which qualities in people might make a successful match, the sites are taking a more limited approach. Grouper gives people just a few questions to answer, matches them up using location and mobile technology, and then puts them together in real life to see if there’s a good fit. And so far, perhaps surprisingly, these in-person dating sites are appealing mainly to 20-somethings. (Perhaps we’re less emotionally-stunted and smartphone-connected than people have assumed?)

Grouper CEO Michael Waxman said his company views technology as a catalyst for bringing people together and solving some of the logistical barriers to interaction, but not as something that ultimately creates the bonds between people that sites like his aim to provide:

“One of the bigger picture things we think of a lot is how traditional social networks are sort of weirdly isolating. I mean, the typical use case of Facebook is you’re by yourself in your room at the glow of your computer,” he said. “I think that technology could be actually social and not isolating, so we said, ‘what does it look like to use the same technology that isolates us to actually bring us together?’ Let’s put down our phones and computers and use technology to make stuff like this possible, but then enjoy the company of the people we’re with.”

HowAboutWe, a site that allows people to select each other based around an activity and meet up offline, has seen similar success in this field, having just announced one million dates created this week.

“It aligns with how the web actually works and how dating actually works,” said HowAboutWe co-founder Brian Schechter. “Traditional sites are more like interviews, where you lay out information and then you go out on bland coffee shop-like dates. Whereas here, you actually connect around mutual interests and then go out and see if there’s a spark around some other person.”

Grouper pairs up two groups of three friends (three guys and three girls, three guys and three guys, etc.) and sends them to a bar, where the first round of drinks are covered by the $20 per person fee. The company picks the bar, confirms the date, and doesn’t give you info on the other group until you arrive at the bar. The company even texts you during the meet-up to ask how it’s going — a task that Waxman said started to seem overhwhelming as Grouper grew, but an idea they’ve been able to scale by building their own custom CRM to accomplish.

So how do they make the pairs? Waxman said it actually involves a good combination of human intuition and technology — an actual person has to sign off on each Grouper that’s created.

“It’s half human, half machine,” he said, noting that having six people join each group solves another problem common to dating sites, which is that if they do their job too well and start making matches, you lose your customers as soon as you’ve found success. With six people, the chances of three couples pairing off is pretty low, but the chance of one couple creating a good story for the other four people to share is much higher.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
• GigaOM Euro 20: the European startups to watch
• Survey: How apps can solve photo management

This week at the mHealth Summit in Washington, DC, the wireless communications giant said researchers at AT&T Labs are working on a wireless asthma sensor that scans the air for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that may exacerbate asthma symptoms and then alerts patients via smartphone and other devices.

Developed through its AT&T ForHealth Initiative, which it launched in 2010 to develop wireless, cloud-based and networking services for the healthcare industry, the sensor, called Asthma Trigger, is powered by AT&T’s network but was created in partnership with a manufacturer.

According to MedGadget, the device itself leverages the Actuarius gateway cloud platform and uses a ZigBee wireless-equipped, battery-operated microcomputer. When it senses high levels of VOCs, it can feed the air quality data through AT&T’s healthcare information data exchange platform, which then enables patients to receive alerts on smartphones, tablets and computers.

AT&T’s device, which is still in development, isn’t the only interesting innovation for asthmatics. Others include GPS and WiFi-equipped inhalers that can help physicians track their patients’ usage and epidemiologists monitor broader trends, as well as an asthma monitoring “Wheezometer” that analyzes a patient’s breath sounds and transmits the data to physicians and caregivers.

In an interview with MedGadget, AT&T Labs researcher Bob Miller said his team decided to tackle asthma when they realized that the chronic respiratory condition is on the rise – according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, 25 million Americans have asthma and 27,000 adults miss work daily because of it.

But as data and IT solutions move deeper into the healthcare industry, devices like the Asthma Trigger can help AT&T establish a foothold in a growing multi-billion-dollar market.

Miller told MedGadget:

“As healthcare becomes increasingly data-driven thanks to a new generation of inexpensive sensors, communication capabilities will play an important role in transmitting this data to where it’s needed—to doctors, hospitals, researchers. AT&T Research is laying the groundwork now for a complete medical communications infrastructure, not just for an asthma device but for a whole host of sensor-based medical devices.”

Earlier this year, at a major health IT conference, AT&T’s assistant vice president for ForHealth Randall Porter told MedHealthWorld that AT&T is motivated not only by profit but by its own position as a self-insured employer. Each year, he said, it spends $5.5 billion to cover its 1.2 million employees.

The ForHealth initiative encompasses a range of projects, including cloud-based solutions for medical imaging and information management, telehealth and an online community for secure messaging and information exchange between patients, doctors, payers and providers.

As we’ve written about before, healthcare is in the early days of a massive change, as mobile technology, more open data, connected devices and cloud computing upend legacy systems and boost patient engagement. Plenty of new startups, funded by a flood of venture capital money, are taking on many of the same areas addressed by ForHealth. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how AT&T competes with (and maybe even buys) some of those upstarts.

Image by Peter Nadolski via Shutterstock.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A near-term outlook for big data
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• Survey: How apps can solve photo management

As someone who generally uses a mobile device from the crack of dawn until it’s time for bed, this question is almost counter-intuitive. Yet, as I read about experiences from people who actually have flirted with a smartphone divorce, I’m intrigued. Why? Because there’s a common theme here: Those who have entered the limited-smartphone world appear to enjoy less stress, more peace and greater clarity.

The latest example comes from Brad Feld, a managing director at the Foundry Group VC firm. Feld stayed off his iPhone for 14 days, with the first seven days being completely offline. The following week, he connected to the online world through his MacBook Air and Kindle tablet. He’s using the iPhone again, but in a totally different way: Voice calls, the occasional map query and checking his calendar. The result?

“There’s some magic peace that comes over me when I’m not constantly looking at my iPhone. I really noticed it after two weeks of not doing it. After a few days of withdrawal, the calm appears. My brain is no longer jangly, the dopamine effect of “hey – another email, another tweet” goes away, and I actually am much faster at processing whatever I’ve got on a 27″ screen than on a little tiny thing that my v47 eyes are struggling to read.”

Surprisingly, given that I cover mobile technology for a living, I see merit to this approach, although I’m not advocating, nor willing to try a complete lack of smartphone use. I sympathize with the “always connected” stress that Feld has alleviated. There are some days where I wake up already feeling worn out by what I know is waiting for me: A smartphone filled with tweets, Facebook updates, emails, blog comments to respond to, friend requests on several social networks, and the list goes on….

There’s a good reason not to go cold turkey and dump the smartphone though, and Feld hits this topic spot on:

“Now, I’d love for there to be a way for me to know about high priority interrupts – things that actually are urgent. But my iPhone doesn’t do this at all in any discernable (sic) way. There are too many different channels to reach me and they aren’t effectively conditioned – I either have to open them up to everyone (e.g. txtmsg via my phone number) or convince people to use a specific piece of software – many, such as Glassboard – which are very good, but do require intentional behavior on both sides.”

I think this feeling of “I might be missing something important on my phone“ is prevalent among any smartphone owner that seeks to curtail their handset use. Regardless of the mobile platform you choose — I use iOS and Android daily, which could be adding to my particular challenges — one could use notifications to separate the noise from the signal on a smartphone or tablet. That’s probably an area I need to look at reconfiguring in my own mobile device use: I have way too many apps notifying me. But that’s just a start. Feld is on to something when it comes to the need for a better way to manage “high-priority interrupts,” as he calls them.

Clearly, emails, texts and other messages need responses. For this, Feld is relying on specific times to manage those activities and he’s doing so through devices with larger displays and keyboards. As I think about the emails that I need to respond to, most of them probably could wait a few hours and I may try living without an email client or web page open all day, every day as a result. [Ed. note: we frown on this ;) ] In Feld’s implementation, he found immediate benefits:

“Yesterday, it occurred to me that I was much more mentally engaged throughout the day in the stuff going on (I had a typically packed day). I had dinner with my brother at night. No phones were on the table, no checking in to Foursquare, no quick scanning of Twitter in the bathroom while peeing. When I got home, I hung out with Amy – no email. This morning, I just spent an hour and went through the 200 emails that had piled up since 5:30pm when I’d last checked my email. My inbox is empty.”

Completely ditching the smartphone isn’t the answer here; that’s not what I’m suggesting nor considering. However, as the smartphone has evolved over the past handful of years, I notice more “information anxiety” in my life is the effect: The smarter the phone gets, the more I use it. And the more I use it, the more scattered I often feel in my thoughts and focus.

I couldn’t easily live without my smartphone because I do get tremendous benefit from it: Socially, professionally, and personally. However, cutting back on the near-constant “face in the screen” activities might not be a bad idea until I see better software methods to manage my use of this mobile hardware.

As a follow up, even if a smartphone use reduction experiment doesn’t pan out, I’ll be looking at how to improve or focus notifications to reduce stress while also allowing for high priority interruptions. I’m open to suggestions in the meantime, as I suspect there are some tools to help. I also think there’s a tremendous opportunity for improvements both at the smartphone application level as well as in the native platform. I know I have to take responsibility for my usage patters, but a truly smart phone should help.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities
• Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013