A Gimlety look at fitness trackers and startup bloviation

July 22, 2014 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]It must be summer and The Gimlet Eye is looking for amusement and diversion. In a Real World of shotdown passenger aircraft and Middle East war, even Neil Versel in Meaningful HIT News is opting for the lighter side. He draws our attention to the humor of Steven Colbert on the subject “The Golden Era of Digital Toys”. Instead of actually running a marathon, simulate it with your Fitbit by mounting it to a paint shaker. But beyond these yuks, Mr Colbert aptly points to the vaporous language used by every DH3-er (Digital Health Hypester Horde) to promote their ‘revolutionary’ device.

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Vessyl.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Case in point: Vessyl, a cup that reads out what you are drinking down to the brand, flavor and calorie count and tosses the information to an app on your smartphone. (Of course, you could read the container, but that would be soooo uncool.) Colbert uses Vessyl to skewer Healthcare Startup Bloviation. There’s the Founder with red oblong glasses on ‘tracking real time hydration’. Then another principal, of whom The Gimlet Eye notes must be so dedicated that has no time to shave, tweeze his eyebrows, comb his hair or put on a clean shirt for the promo video, uttering their mission statement like Moses Bringing Down The Tablets from Sinai: ‘we help people make healthier and more informed decisions in real time.’ The final reductio ad absurdum is the creative director whispering in awe on its seven years of intensive design work. For a drink cup. Retail $200 if it meets its early 2015 ship date. Raising $50,000 via MarkOne’s oh-so-hip ‘n’ cool glossy demo website. With the requisite hipsters (none over 25) livin’ large in San Francisco’s glam settings, of course clutching their Vessyl.

This is what gets funded? As in the proverb, has the mountain labored to bring forth a mouse? Mr Colbert’s device in counterpoint is brilliant. It should be funded shortly. Colbert Video.

Additional breathless D3H coverage: VentureBeat. CNet traces its ties to the Jawbone UP designer. (Editor Donna note: the cup readout on brands and accuracy re sugar and caffeine does sound a bit too good to be true. Let’s see if it’s for real in 2015.)

Much ado about Airo: the denouement

November 23, 2013 | by

Like the Maltese Falcon, ‘the stuff that dreams are made of’?

The madly touted Airo fitness band, with its claimed mini-spectrometer built into the band to detect nutritional blood metabolites for passive sensing of food consumption [TTA 30 Oct], has, after a firestorm in the industry press, conceded it lacked proof that it would ‘work as advertised’ and refunded money to its early backers. Very rarely have we seen mass disparagement in health tech, but the fact that the developers ginned up a lot of breathless publicity over a device without a working prototype and no studies to back a future design made it all too easy. (more…)

Jawbone jawbones $100 million in financing

September 17, 2013 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/band1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Fortune, no usual hangout for health tech news, headlined late last week that Jawbone, which recently relaunched its UP fitness tracker after the earlier version developed glitches, obtained $93 million in debt financing and is rumored to be lining up another $20 million in equity financing from its four largest existing VC backers: Andreessen Horowitz, JPMorgan Digital Growth Fund, Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Reportedly they are wildly back-ordered for the colorful and stylish UP fitness tracker (now a fashionista item, a sure sign of scarcity). Their founder/CEO Hosain Rahman told Fortune “We’ve been experiencing crazy sell-through demand, particularly since the relaunch of Up. It’s been faster than anything we’d had before, and equity is not the most efficient way to scale all that.” We’ve previously noted Jawbone’s aggressive acquisition warpath with BodyMedia [30 April] and Massive Health [11 Feb]. Competitors have hardly been sleeping: Fitbit just raised an additional $43 million to add to their previous $23 million [15 Aug] and Withings a fresh $30 million [22 July], so fitness trackers are all going one way–up. Exclusive: Jawbone raises more than $100 million (Fortune). Also Mobihealthnews.

Fitbit as clinical assessment tool: Mayo Clinic

September 6, 2013 | by | 2 Comments

Not unexpected, but sooner than one would think given the relative newness of fitness trackers. A Mayo Clinic study published in the September issue of the Journal of Thoracic Surgery (abstract) monitored a group of elderly patients who had elective major surgery, were older than 50 (that’s elderly?) and were expected to be in the hospital from 5 – 7 days. The Fitbit was worn on a disposable ankle strap given their limited mobility. Data went first to the Fitbit website then over to a dashboard for clinical use. Patients were also tracked when they went home, home with home health assistance or to skilled nursing/rehab. Day 2 seemed to be a critical breaking point (more…)