Rochester, Minnesota-based Ambient Clinical Analytics, a startup that will soon begin selling mobile hospital data management tools developed at the Mayo Clinic, has raised $1.1 million from the Social+Capital Partnership, Rock Health, and the Mayo Clinic itself.
"Fifteen to 20 years ago, the medical technology world was swept by analytics-based business intelligence and process intelligence...
A new report from IMS Health on the use of social media by pharmaceutical companies finds that among the top 50 pharmaceutical companies, half don't engage with consumers and patients through social media. But of those that do, IMS found that Johnson & Johnson emerged as a clear leader. It scored a 70 on IMS's Social Media Engagement Index. The next highest score, from GlaxoSmithkline, was...
The Mayo Clinic's recent iPad trial for cardiac surgery patients, which MobiHealthNews first wrote about in February, has received a good deal of attention for using Fitbit activity monitors in a clinical setting. But Dr. David J. Cook, who led the study, says the real innovation of the study is unprecedented levels of patient engagement -- in patients he repeatedly described as "70-year-olds on...
Fitness coaching program Sessions has launched and raised under $1 million from SV Angel, Collaborative Fund, Blackbird and Joshua Kushner.
The company, a Rock Health alum, pairs users with coaches to improve fitness. First, users complete a diagnostic test and then after the coach is chosen, the user and coach meet to discuss a fitness plan. From there, the coach will monitor the user using...
We never really know where the next game-changing innovation will come from. The smartphone started out as just that -- a smarter phone. But when Apple opened up its API to developers, that open source project started to unlock the true potential of a handheld, connected touchscreen computer. Nowadays, the ability to make a phone call might just be the least important thing your smartphone does...
The Fitbit as it was used to track cardiac surgery patients.
Mayo Clinic has finally published a study, completed last year, on using a Fitbit activity tracker to monitor recovery in cardiac surgery patients. They found that step tracking with the Fitbit was easy and cost-effective to implement, and preliminary data suggests that collecting step data could help hospitals determine the...
Raleigh, North Carolina-based Axial Exchange, a mobile app developer, raised just under $5 million from undisclosed investors, according to an SEC filing. Axial Exchange is backed by a syndicate of venture capital firms, led by Canaan Partners.
The company recently announced a series of enhancements to its mobile patient engagement app which include prioritizing elements related to day-to-day...
Studies have shown that exercise video games, or exergames, can benefit elderly people who sometimes have trouble getting enough daily physical activity. But few studies have dealt with the question of how to get older people to engage with video games in the first place.
"I can give you a stationary bike, but if you don't bike it, I doubt that you will get any benefits from it," said Annerieke...
Mayo Clinic announced last week a new online platform called Mayo Clinic Healthy Living that will leverage mobile health tools to provide preventative care to employees of Mayo's B2B employer clients. The company plans to launch the product in October.
"The clinic is a great setting, it's really great for complex medical problems, but for the majority of the population that has no significant...
For the past few years San Francisco-based Sessions has been developing a direct-to-consumer, mobile-enabled program for inactivity and nutrition. Sessions, which was a member of digital health accelerator Rock Health's second class in 2012, is currently enrolling about 80 people on a rolling basis for a randomized control trial of its coaching program at the Mayo Clinic. Sessions first did an...
