News & Updates

Mark Smith, president of the California Healthcare Foundation, opened the Health 2.0 Conference that just wrapped up in San Francisco with the bold statement that “Health 2.0 has the promise to change the healthcare industry”.

Innovative technologies were spotted and heard about everywhere. A lot of them are still in stealth so we can’t write about them here but here are some LAUNCH! highlights from San Francisco.

Medify, which is re-imagining search for health content, launches it’s new “intelligent” search portal. Medify extracts health data from clinical studies, aggregates the information and presents it in an accessible format for consumers.

Basis, voted as the crowd favorite, unveils its new heart rate monitor watch. The device contains optical monitors to track blood flow, temperature sensors, galvanic skin sensors to measure sweat, and an accelerometer, providing high resolution physical data that feed into web based platform designed to help consumers better understand their activity level.

Numera | social is the first company we’ve seen that allows health care organizations to build white-labelled Facebook-based applications to help patients manage their health. Users can join online health plans, engage with their friends, and track their own health status.

CareCoach provides a suite of online tools to help patients prepare for physician visits. The suite contains a database of over 65,000 recorded doctor patient dialogues to help patients anticipate what questions a doctor will likely ask and hear what other patients ask of their physicians. Patients can also use the CareCoach app to record their conversations with physicians in the office as part of their audio health record.

HealthPer is a social wellness website where users can compete with friends around wellness games and challenges.

GoodRx, a prescription drug price comparison tool, launches a new search engine to help patients find the cheapest drugs and manufacturer coupons. GoodRx also offers an iPhone app so patients can discuss drug prices with their providers while still inside the doctor’s office.

Glu is an online community to empower patients living with type 1 Diabetes (T1D) by being involved in their own health, including research around T1D. The site also serves as a longitudinal health record that captures social interactions between patients. Glu was developed by the T1D exchange whose network contains 70 hospitals with over 20,000 patients.

Thomas Goetz, author of the Decision Tree and Executive Editor at Wired, unveils his new project, 1+1 labs, which uses crisp and engaging data visualization to help patients understand their health data. The SaaS-platform transforms plain lab data into a one page printout that illustrates the relevance of the lab value in a population context, and provides guidelines what patients can do next.

Clarimed, which bills itself as the Kelly Blue book of medical devices, launches a site that allows consumers to find information on efficacy and safety of various devices, diet plans, and procedures.

WellnessFX is a personal health company that helps users navigate the various diagnostics, nutritional products, integrative therapies, and genetic screens available to help them better understand their health risks. The company has raised $1.85 million in seed funding from Voyager Capital, FLOODGATE and a number of Angels to date.

Heard first at Health 2.0

HealthTap launches a revamped online platform and all new mobile application. Over 5,000 physicians across 82 specialties are answering patient questions for free on Healthtap.

Big data company and aggregator of social media content, Physician’s Interactive and the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation launch the Health e-villages initiative with a plan to provide new and refurbished mobile phones loaded with clinical decision support technology to clinics and health providers in poor areas. The organization has already conducted pilots in Haiti, Uganda, the Greater Gulf Coast, and Kenya.

Simplee launches its online bill management service. The Simplee personalized dashboard allows users to track bills and claims in real-time, and edit transaction details. It also alerts consumers to unused benefits like free preventative care services.

Brain Resource, Ltd. debuts MyCalmBeat, a personal heart rate monitor for managing stress. Using a small ear clip, the monitor tracks an individual’s heart rate variability and provides feedback via its mobile and web applications on how to reduce variability through slow breathing exercise.

Zeo introduces a new product, Zeo Mobile, which is a headband worn at night that communicates wirelessly with an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone. The device contains accelerometers and EEG monitors, allowing patients to see how much time they spend in light, deep, or REM sleep. Zeo is slashing prices for all its products, potentially setting off a price war among the growing field of sensor technologies.

Practice Fusion debuts a prototype of its upcoming iPhone and Android applications providing secure EMR access anywhere, anytime. The application will allow physicians to view patient charts, review lab results, respond to prescription refill requests, exchange HIPAA-compliant messages and contact patients.

In other news (is there other news?):

The American Board of Medical Specialties is now formally recognizing clinical informatics as a medical sub-specialty.

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Health 2.0