January’s Crazy Week: JP Morgan, StartUp Health, Health 2.0 WinterTech…and CES takes the cake!

January 9, 2018 | by

This week is Crazy Week for healthcare and technology folk, with multiple major events centered in San Francisco and Las Vegas.

JP Morgan’s 36th annual healthcare conference started today 8 Jan through Thursday 11 Jan in San Francisco. It annually hosts 450 companies presenting to 9,000 attendees. It attracts hundreds of investors and is A Very Big Deal for both investors and companies angling for same. It kicked off with Medtronic‘s Omar Ishrak touting their success with Tyrx, an anti-microbial resorbable envelope for their cardiac devices to prevent post-surgical infection. In value-based care, it may not be in itself reimbursable, but improves outcomes (MedCityNews). The official hashtag for the conference is #JPMHC18 but there’s also #JPM18.

Of interest to Readers will be Teladoc’s presentation at JPM, provided by Seeking Alpha. 

CNBC’s tip sheet on the action. Genalyte‘s lab-on-a-chip demos their blood sampling in 15 minutes technique to MedCityNews‘ writer. And Vive La Biotech–why American investors should be looking at French companies.

Within the event is the invite-only StartUp Health Festival Monday and Tuesday which hashtags at #startuphealth. Separately, but with many of the usual suspects, is Health 2.0’s one-day WinterTech conference in San Francisco the following day on Wednesday 10 Jan, also with an investment focus. (You can imagine the investor and company hopping between conference locations!) Alex Fair is also leading a Meetup tweetup for the week–more information here. You may also want to check out #pinksocks—pinksocks is an ad hoc group dedicated to health and wellness innovation and doctor-patient connectedness.

Further south, the sprawl of Las Vegas has been taken over by the sprawl of CES (aptly dubbed ‘Whoa!’) starting Tuesday 9 Jan through Friday 12 Jan. The substantial health tech focus (more…)

Why a smartwatch may feel…de trop

December 2, 2014 | by

De trop —French, adjective, meaning too much, too many, unwanted

Have you noticed that many early adopters have skipped smartwatches? Other wearables such as fitness trackers have taken their place successively on the wrists of your favorite Quantified Selfer or weekend warrior. (A sign: they are now mass market at drug stores like CVS and sports stores for the holiday.) But how many people are looking forward to a special delivery of an Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S or even the well-reviewed and well-priced LG G Watch R in Santa’s pack? Having just returned from the NYeC Digital Health Conference, I saw few on the wrists of DH mavens. Smartwatches (and clothing wearables) also faded out at CES Unveiled [TTA 21 Nov], a complete turnaround from June’s event.

If you’ve been wondering too, you’ll be nodding like a bobblehead at John Nosta’s blog post in Nuvium, The Death of Wearables. (more…)

Fashion Week’s fickle fitness favorites

September 9, 2014 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Misfit-shine-wearable.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Last September during NYC Fashion Week, the must-have fashionista accessory for the wrist was a Jawbone, in hard-to-get colors like aqua [TTA 17 Nov 13]. This year, Misfit Shine hit the runways with a vengeance (so to speak) with some…er, interesting…wearables with hard-core appeal. Courtesy of Chromat, it was incorporated into this interestingly air-conditioned evening look. We doubt we’ll see it at Connected Health Symposium in Boston at the end of October…but maybe at CES Unveiled on 11 November in New York.

But Jawbone is the one that’s scoring big funding–they’ve ‘jawboned’ another $100 million, the same amount they received in financing last year at this time. It’s a chunk of the $250 million they were raising earlier this year. According to Re/Code, new investors include Rizvi Traverse Management. The round puts the company valuation north of $3.3 billion. Like Misfit, it is also opening up its UP software API to be used by developers on other smartphones, watches and wearables.