By Cory Schultz and Satish Misra, MD
The Health 2.0 conference just wrapped up in San Fransisco, continuing a trend of impressive growth that reflects the accelerating pace of change in medicine. In fact, this year the conference will be held around the world throughout the year in such locations as San Francisco, New Delhi, India and Berlin, Germany.
Some of the innovative companies driving this change were given the opportunity to show off their products, catching the attention of the popular media as well as healthcare professionals. iMedicalApps has covered many of these companies before, such as Withings whose blood pressure cuff we put in a head-to-head comparison with a similar product from iHealth. In addition to Withings, two other companies – Basis and Ideal Life – caught the attention of popular media outlets.
Basis is a company that has created an affordable, relatively low-priced wrist-worn heart rate monitor and health tracker device.
According to the Basis website, they believe it’s easier to get and stay healthy when wellness is fun, social and informative. The device will be available later this year and will sell for $199. According to their website,
“To put this within everyone’s reach, we invented the Basis Band – the world’s first connected health and heart rate monitor wearable on the wrist. Convenient and customizable, the multi-sensor Basis Band collects data like heart rate, calories burned, physical activity and sleep patterns. It links wirelessly to your personal dashboard where you can easily view performance, share data, earn rewards, and engage with the Basis community. Basis is backed by Norwest Venture Partners and DCM.”
We talked about this kind of technology in greater detail with the CEO of Emergency Medical Technologies, whose Wriskwatch similarly provides heart rate, blood pressure, and other physiologic monitoring capabilities in a wristwatch. Whats particularly interesting is the linkage to social media to drive healthy behaviors, a trend we are seeing with a number of other mobile health technologies as well. In addition to these community-derived incentives, it will be interesting to see what other incentive structures develop to drive healthy behaviors. For example, the Basis Band could be used to track aerobic exercise with the incentive being discounts on insurance premiums if a patient meets a certain goal.
Another company that has a device promoted at Health 2.0 is Withing. They currently have a new blood pressure monitor that integrates with an iPhone which was previously reviewed by the iMedicalApps team.
“The new device, priced at $129.95, features a battery-operated cuff that straps around your arm and plugs into an iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Your blood pressure and heart rate results can be sent to health sites such as Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault, social media sites, or straight to your doctor. The monitor comes with a free companion app downloadable from the iTunes Store.”
Moreover, IDEAL LIFE showed off their new IDEAL LIFE Health Tablet. IDEAL LIFE is a multinational company that creates mHealth devices that are secure, reliable, and mobile. The tablet device demonstrated is their next product iteration, described as
“…the first electronic tablet to automatically sync data between healthcare provider information systems and patients’ health records. The IDEAL LIFE tablet works on any cellular network, connecting consumers with their own health records when they need them.”
The Health 2.0 Conference presented numerous new health innovations that cater to the medical community and general public alike. In fact, we previously discussed the winners of the Health 2.0 Code-a-thon. While not every device, system, or idea presented will make it, there is clearly a great deal of energy and investment taking place that will hopefully help us improve the way we care for patients.
Source: Yahoo News
