WellDoc and Samsung will bring a new version of WellDoc's BlueStar mobile prescription therapy for diabetes to 300 Toronto citizens in partnership with the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN), a Canadian government-funded nonprofit. The new offering, BlueStar-S, will combine features of BlueStar and Samsung S Health.
"Think of Samsung as a critical boost to what BlueStar already delivers," Anand...
Ford's 2011 visualization of heart rate monitoring seats
Ford has confirmed that it will no longer continue a multiyear research initiative to embed heart rate sensors in its car seats, according to a report from the Financial Times.
The carmaker explained that one reason they decided to halt the initiative on heart rate-sensing seats is that there are cheaper and more precise heart rate ...
Chris Bergstrom
Recent months have brought with them a number of important hires and departures at digital health companies. Here's a roundup of some of the ones we've been tracking. Feel free to add your own in the comments below.
Chris Bergstrom has stepped away from his full-time position of Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer at WellDoc, but he will remain an advisor to the company. As a...
This week the Federal Trade Commission published a report focused on privacy and security issues related to the massive Internet of Things (IoT) trend, which includes the growing number of connected health devices. The report summarizes the discussions that took place at an FTC-hosted workshop in November 2013, and it also includes recommendations for the industry from FTC's staff, which they put...
By the end of the second quarter this year, digital health funding had already surpassed the total funding for 2014, according to a June 2014 report from Rock Health. This growth also shows in the top funded companies for the first half of the year.
While Proteus Digital Health received the largest investment in the first half of 2014 as well as the first half of 2013, last year Proteus raised $...
During a fireside chat at the annual Khosla Ventures CEO summit, investor Vinod Khosla talked to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin about Google becoming a health company one day. As David Shaywitz wrote in a column for Forbes, Page and Brin see their company's health initiatives as "cool" projects, but they argue because of all the red tape in healthcare they are ultimately not...
Baltimore, Maryland-based WellDoc, one of the earliest and best known mobile health companies focused on diabetes management, has appointed Kevin McRaith as the company's new president. McRaith most recently served as VP of Sales & Marketing at Human Genome Sciences, and previously worked at Genentech, Abbott and Baxter. In this role McRaith will report to WellDoc CEO Ryan Sysko. WellDoc's...
The promise of Google's glucose-sensing contact lens is non-invasive continuous glucose monitoring: that rather than having to prick themselves with lancets several times a day, the nation's 26 million people with diabetes could take their readings on their phone via passively collected tears.
If that sounds too good to be true to you, you're not alone. A number of voices in the diabetes care...
Only about 1.2 percent of people with diabetes who own a smartphone use a mobile application to manage their condition, according to a new report by Research2Guidance. That's a group of about 1.6 million users. However, the firm predicts that by 2018 that number will rise to 24 million users, or 7.8 percent of smartphone owners with diabetes. Correction: The original version of this lead said 1.2...
Baltimore, Maryland-based WellDoc, one of the earliest and best known mobile health companies focused on diabetes management, has landed a $20 million round of investment that includes contributions from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Windham Venture Partners. The announcement marks WellDoc's first round of institutional money -- the company has long relied on angel investors and debt...
