The Next Frontier in Digital Health

Digital health was prominently displayed at CES this year with lots of floor space dedicated to the industry and a cornucopia of health and fitness-focused wearable devices debuting in Las Vegas.

The declining costs of hardware components, the ubiquity of smartphones and the need for consumers to cut their medical costs is spurring innovation in many areas of digital health.  Given these trends, the line between health and fitness devices is blurring.   Every consumer electronics company from Sony to LG to Samsung is either getting into the game or thinking about it.  But as activity tracking becomes increasingly more commoditized, health device makers need to step-up their offerings and focus on disease management and improving outcomes.   Every patient consumer wants simple interfaces that engage them and allows them to gain valuable insights into their health and wellbeing – not achieved by the current cadre of activity sensors.

Health device makers and wellness apps wanting to provide real value for their customers are moving beyond step counting and integrating into connected health services in the cloud.  These services use a holistic approach to engaging the provider and patient in managing adherence and compliance and by extension – outcomes.    Incorporating physicians, pharmacists, therapists and trainers as part of an integrated “care-team” allows for meaningful patient engagement easing compliance and allowing patients to become “emotionally” accountable for using the app or device as directed by their care-team.   For healthcare providers, this same integration made possible by ubiquitous connectivity – allows them to think and engage beyond the practical aspects of care – the exam, laboratory test or simple disease management.

The past year has proved that many pieces are in place (desire, policy, market demand, innovation, investment, etc.) for a radical transformation in healthcare. We’re beginning to see many aspects of our health and wellness reimagined.  There is now a growing community of stakeholders who understand that change is not only possible, but inevitable, and best of all are taking action to see those changes come true.  The next step in this tectonic shift, is leveraging a higher level of connectivity where data, devices and humans are optimally connected to enable good care decisions – shifting the cost curve and encouraging accountability and adherence beyond what’s offered by today’s consumer health devices.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Source: Smithsonian Magazine

Google Unveils Smart Contact Lens

Google unveiled a contact lens that monitors glucose levels in tears, a potential reprieve for millions of diabetics who have to jab their finger to draw their own blood as many as 10 times a day.  The lens uses a minuscule glucose sensor and a wireless transmitter to help the 382 million diabetics around the world that need need insulin and who keep a close watch of their sugar levels.
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Source: Google
Source: Google

 

Why Wearable Devices Will Never Be As Disruptive As Smartphones

Wearables moved from the buzz idea of 2013 into a tangle of clips, bands, badges, brooches, glasses, earpieces and headsets. It’s all too easy to be cynical about the products launched at this annual tech frenzy in the Mojave Desert, but here’s a skeptical case between the tech crowd’s boosterism and the casual scoffing. Let’s step back and try to separate the potential from the hyperbole. Read more

Source: Jawbone
Source: Jawbone

Thousands of the World’s Internet Connected Things In One Place

A new project is curating and organizing all of the sundry gadgets that collectively comprise the so-called “Internet of Things”.  A new website seeks to catalog all of the world’s Internet-enabled devices.  So far, they’ve got more than 2000 listed, and they plan to add more in the months ahead.  There are fitness monitors, medical devices, smart home products and all sorts of other gadgets ready for measuring and monitoring everything around us. Read more

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Source: The Connected Devices Project

2014 is the year of the internet of things—no, seriously, we mean it this time

It’s fair to say that more people have heard of the “internet of things” than have experienced it. There is breathless press coverage of the phenomenon—always patiently re-explained by tech pundits as the trend by which all of our most mundane possessions will become internet-connected—each time novel, if obscure, inventions make a name off successful Kickstarter campaigns. These are invariably coupled with estimates that the internet of things will be a multi-trillion dollar business.

Keeping your kids off the internet will be a lot harder when their toys are already in it. Source: Toymail
Keeping your kids off the internet will be a lot harder when their toys are already in it. Source: Toymail

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Athlete’s Cap Sends Out Alerts About Head Injuries

Research shows that repeated hard knocks to the head during impact sports can cause long-term brain injury. But it can be hard for coaches watching from the sidelines to tell how hard a blow really was.

That’s why MC10 developed a skullcap to be worn alone or underneath a helmet that detects how hard a player’s skull is hit. Depending on the severity of the impact, different colored LEDs light up on the back of the cap for all to see.

Reebok Checklight - Source: IEEE
Reebok Checklight – Source: IEEE

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Ready or not, the Programmable World is upon us

We live in an age where household objects can now intelligently communicate with each other via wireless protocols.

Ever heard of the ‘programmable world’? Maybe not. The phrase, as far as I know, was coined by a US Wired journalist, Bill Wasik, in an article earlier this year.

Put simply, the programmable world is one where physical objects – lights, coffee pots, garage doors, AC units, alarm systems, sprinkler systems, and sensors – humidity, temperature, motion, etc – talk to one another via wireless protocols to make those physical objects ‘intelligent’.

Others have called the phenomenon the Internet of Things, the Internet of Everything or the Industrial Internet (inappropriate, according to Wasik, because most of the devices aren’t actually on ‘the internet’) or the Sensor Revolution (inappropriate because it ignores the devices themselves).

Source: Salon
Source: Salon

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Broadcom’s CEO bets on a behemoth market for wearable chips

Broadcom has become a big name in consumer electronics and networking chips. But now the multibillion-dollar Irvine, Calif.-based chip design firm sees an even bigger opportunity in the market of silicon chips for wearable computing devices. The market for connected, wearable electronics is expected to hit $1.5 billion by 2014. And the company’s WICED Direct platform brings Internet connectivity to all sorts of previously unconnected appliances and wearable devices.

Source: Broadcom
Source: Broadcom

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