Scanadu gets the #SCAMadu Rage of the Crowd, misses XPRIZE finals, raises $6.5 million
[grow_thumb image=”http://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Scanadu-Scout.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]UPDATED December has been a mense horribilis for Scanadu, what with bricking the Scanadu Scout next year, missing the Qualcomm XPRIZE finals and a low equity raise.
Scanadu Scout heading to Doorstop and Paperweight-ville. This all-in-one diagnostic device, which promoted itself as a tricorder worthy of Star Trek‘s Bones, announced on 13 December that on 15 May next year, it will deactivate all units. (What Bones would say: “It’s dead, Jim!”) Users of this admittedly investigational device who purchased it for $200 starting in 2014, glitches and all, [TTA 5 Apr 14], are facing not only that it will ‘cease to function’ but also presumably the loss of access to their data as well. A Scanadu spokesperson to TechCrunch last week (13 Dec) attributed the action as necessary to comply with FDA regulations requiring investigational use devices to be deactivated at the end of the study.
Scanadu also failed to make the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Final Two, also announced on the same day. They had already teamed with Intelesens of Northern Ireland. (More below)
Mobihealthnews reported on Sunday 18 December that Scanadu completed an additional $6.5 million equity funding, according to a SEC filing. Investors are not disclosed. The funding dated 7 December is considerably less than their $35 million Series B raise, primarily from Chinese VC investors, back in April 2015 which is the bulk of their now $56.1 million funding to date (CrunchBase). It is hard to interpret this one way or another, but MHN’s Jonah Comstock doesn’t hesitate to relate it to both the Scout bricking and the XPRIZE loss. To this Editor, it’s either conservative or like a line of credit, but why now, and not what you expect after a healthy Series B.
Returning to the soon-to-be bricked Scouts, there is no mention of current customer compensation, swap or discounting on future purchases of other Scanadu products, such as Vitals, the successor to the Scout, or Urine for urine testing. (more…)
CEWeek NYC (Part 2): wearables, robots, telehealth gone to the dogs!
CEWeek NYC, Metropolitan Pavilion/Altman Building (@CEWeekNY)
Part 2
Over in FashionWare-ville….
[grow_thumb image=”http://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/0625141038.jpg” thumb_width=”170″ /]The Healbe GoBe 100% Automatic Body Manager turned out to be a big draw at this pavilion, for reasons that to the casual visitor were not apparent. Its claim: it automatically estimates both calorie intake and calories burned through measurements taken by an impedance sensor to measure tissue resistance, based on blood glucose being converted to liquid in tissues and the amount of liquid released. Having been through the now-vanished-into-thin Airo affair (with its fictional mini-spectrometer for detecting nutritional blood metabolites from food consumption, TTA 23 Nov 13), I was skeptical of Healbe’s claims and told co-founder and managing director George Mikaberydze (left) just that. He patiently explained how it works to me and seemed to be sincerely understanding of my skepticism. He briefly demoed the display on his smartphone, which was hard to track as it indicated negative caloric burn and was partly in Cyrillic, but these numbers were relative to…?
It turned out that I was not the first to question, and he was well prepared.
Healbe turns out to be quite controversial. The company raised over $1 million on Indiegogo this March/April, prominently featured in its well-produced GoBe materials and in its PR communications. It’s promising delivery in September. On researching this, (more…)
Crime-sensing hair clip points to ‘fashionable safety’
Rock Health opens new HQ to wonder, sums up 2013
With that aside, the highlights of the Rock Health Digital Health Funding Year In Review were generally positive, but some of them, looked at critically, weren’t, even when depicted in attractive charts and graphs: (more…)
Qualcomm Life, Palomar Health pair up to check out Glass-wear
The pairing up of Qualcomm Life and California health system Palomar Health in Glassomics is certainly a novel move. It’s termed an ‘incubator’ to explore wearable computing in medicine, but it is more like a test bed for the partners. Heading it are two recognized health tech honchos–Don Jones, VP of Qualcomm Life and Orlando Portale, Palomar’s Chief Innovation Officer. Innovation and development is not new for Palomar and Portale–they trialled AirStrip, Mr. Portale’s mobile platform for it (eventually sold to them), and were key in the three-year ramp-up of Sotera Wireless’ Visi Mobile patient vital sign monitor [TTA 23 Aug 12]. Much has been made of the Glass connection and testing its healthcare chops, but their mission is not limited to ‘glassware’ (and not for your weekend drinks party, either.) It’s also a home to test out Qualcomm’s 2net connection platform and Healthy Circles Care Orchestration tools and services. Glassomics website. Gigaom article
[grow_thumb image=”http://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/specs.jpg” thumb_width=”170″ /]And for your weekend drinks party, here’s a cooler, lighter and less geeky take on Glass: GlassUp. It reports incoming e-mails, text messages, tweets, Facebook updates and other messages. Italian design for Augmented Reality (the new cool term for the category) of course. Yours for $299-399 on crowdfunder Indiegogo, where they are less than halfway to their goal with 11 days left (better hustle!). The Indiegogo video here.
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