Keeping it cool: LifeinaBox mini fridge for meds goes Indiegogo

September 13, 2017 | by | No Comments
[grow_thumb image=”http://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/lifeinabox_health_management.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]The LifeinaBox two-pound mini-refrigerator for medications has debuted today (13 Sept) with a crowdfunding raise on Indiegogo. Since our 3 July article, the company headed by Uwe Diegel in France has determined its delivery date (June 2018) and directed all pre-orders previously made on the website to the Indiegogo US site. The goal is $50,000 over the next month on a flexible raise (funds are kept even if goal is not met), so this is clearly a test of market demand. The website and the Indiegogo site are beefed up considerably with the basic unit now at $180 for early birds (still available) and $250 with a battery pack. Prototype units run on 110 or 220 volt AC current, external battery pack, or car charger, and are monitored via app. As back in July, this Editor thinks that solutions for specific, even narrow, but important problems are absolutely on trend in this uncertain environment–and the more important (painful?) they are, the better for the company. Hat tip to CEO/founder Uwe Diegel.

Scanadu gets the #SCAMadu Rage of the Crowd, misses XPRIZE finals, raises $6.5 million

December 16, 2016 | by | No Comments

[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!

June 26, 2014 | by | No Comments

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’

March 6, 2014 | by | No Comments
[grow_thumb image=”http://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/first_sign_clip-1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The First Sign hair clip is designed to sense impact/fall, send a panic alert, then transmit the information to a smartphone to a monitoring service–and more. The app activates an onboard microphone which transmits audio, then activates audio, video (through the smartphone camera) and GPS, sending information to the internet. The phone barks “help is on the way and evidence collected” to deter the attacker. All is live centrally monitored and if not a false alarm, the phone automatically calls out for emergency assistance and to emergency contacts. It’s being priced on Indiegogo for $75 inclusive of the first year of monitoring ($50 without) and has various decorative covers. In places like New York which have fairly low and non-violent levels of crime, First Sign definitely has an ‘assurance’ market, and the developers are wise to the uses it has for older adult safety, lone worker, driving and travel. Especially for older women, a decorative clip is far more attractive than a pendant (as long as you have a smartphone–a possible tie in with GreatCall/5 Star?) However, in places like India, which have high levels of violent male-on-female street crime [TTA 4 April 13, 2 Feb 13] — or East St. Louis, Missouri, Detroit or Flint Michigan or Camden New Jersey — the minor element of a barking phone and distance monitoring is not going to deter very much. First Sign is a bit more than halfway from its modest Indiegogo goal of $50,000, with only seven days left.  Gizmag

Rock Health opens new HQ to wonder, sums up 2013

January 23, 2014 | by | No Comments
[grow_thumb image=”http://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/RockHealth_Photo©BruceDamonte_02.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]As seems to be the way in the West Coast Digital Health scene, the opening of accelerator/funder Rock Health’s new HQ in the Mission Bay district of San Francisco gained more heavy-breathing hype than its mostly positive 2013 digital health investment report. The soireé during last week’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, glowingly reported in Xconomy with plenty of pics of the achingly trendy interior design and Health Digerati/D3Hers (Digital Health Hypester/Hipster Horde) at play also was a demo of a different type–how insular interests interlock and circle in Fog City. Star guest San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee spearheaded the remaking of the district into a life sciences/tech center; the Xconomy-moderated panel discussion paired him with Rock Health founder/CEO Halle Tecco and Alexandria Real Estate CEO Joel Marcus;  Alexandria underwrites Xconomy and has a huge investment in life sciences real estate; the new Rock Health HQ is on the ground floor of an Alexandria-owned building. Of course Mission Bay is now hyped as the ‘US Digital Health Hub’ for all those Rock Health-accelerated, funded startups. It does give one pause: how much of this is substance, or is it the peak of style before tipping into The Trough of Disillusionment? The tartest takedown on this is courtesy of Neil Versel’s Meaningful HIT News column. Pointed pokes abound: at Silicon Valley for its health tech failures (Google Health among them), the odd duplications (Google-funded telemedicine provider Doctor On Demand sounds like American Well, Ameridoc, etc.) and the even odder lack of considering integration with payer/provider systems and workflows.  Keep wasting your money, Silicon Valley venture capitalists (Note to Neil: the circular swings seem to be a feature of Alexandria’s properties–they’re present at Alexandria Center NYC too. Image © Bruce Damonte/Studios Architecture)

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

July 26, 2013 | by | No Comments

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.