Mobile Health

Pew Project wants to "crowdsource" new Internet health survey

Richard Adler — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:04:22 -0700

September 29, 2008
Crowdsourcing a Survey: Health Topics

The Pew Internet Project will conduct a national telephone survey this fall about the internet's impact on health and health care. One of the first tasks is to look at our tried and true "trend" questions and decide which ones we should repeat as is and which ones need to be updated.

Health Horizons

Americans doing more texting than calling

Richard Adler — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:34:42 -0700

According to the New York Times, Sept 29:

In the fourth quarter of 2007, American cellphone subscribers for the first time sent text messages- more than they phoned, according to Nielsen Mobile. Since then, the average subscriber’s volume of text messages has shot upward by 64 percent, while the average number of calls has dropped slightly.

Health Horizons

Raising our Collective Health

Vivian Distler — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:48:16 -0700

Yikes. I haven't blogged in weeks. Well, that's not entirely true. I had written a long post that got eaten by the computer, and I haven't been the same since. But news of HealthRaising, a current Health Horizons project, deserves to be shared.

Mobile Health

Mobile weight loss pilot in Japan

Richard Adler — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:17:52 -0700

Yesterday, Rod Falcon and I met with Dr. Atsushi Ito from the KDDI R&D Laboratories (KDDI is the #2 mobile carrier in Japan). He told us about a pilot that his lab ran designed to support weight loss among company employees. This is an important application since the Japanese government is requiring companies to work with overweight employees to lose weight (or be fined). The second version of the pilot will be launched later this year with a larger group of employees.

Health Horizons

Wall St Journal: Tools Help Patients Interface With Doctors

Richard Adler — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:36:39 -0700

[Richard Adler, who posted the following, is an IFTF Research Affiliate.
His relationship with Zume is completely independent of his work for
IFTF, and this post in no way reflects an endorsement on IFTF's part of
Zume. We do, however, think that the Zuri is a great example of a new
breed of mobile health products, which we will be discussing at our conference on "Reinventing Health Care in a Mobile World."]

An article in the August 19th Wall Street Journal discusses new devices that remind patients to take their medications and track compliance.

Health Horizons

A new player in the online health care marketplace

Vivian Distler — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:30:38 -0700

Courtesy of my colleague, IFTF Research Affiliate Richard Adler:

American Well is a new company that is creating a "online healthcare marketplace." On its website (www.americanwell.com), it states that consumers can,

"Talk to a doctor anytime, without leaving home or scheduling an appointment. Choose from a variety of specialties and connect with the doctor who is right for you."

Mobile Health

read more

Innovation in Africa: "Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto?"

Cesar Castro — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:00:54 -0700

Interesting article describing the innovation capacity of Africa. Mobile devices may be the vehicle by which the African continent can flex it's innovation muscle. More than home electronics/computers/cars, mobile devices are in the hands of many people in the African continent and they are teaching the Western world how to innovate with these devices.

Article from NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/business/worldbusiness/20ping.html?ex=...

Mobile Health

On-the-go heart monitoring

Vivian Distler — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:24:34 -0700

Researchers affiliated with Northern Ireland's University of Ulster have developed a disposable adhesive electrode patch that uses wireless technology to transmit information about a patient's heart and other vital data (like respiratory rate, temperature, and blood oxygenation levels). According to the university's press release,

Health Horizons

iPhone and citizen science

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:07:18 -0700

Alexis Madrigal throws a link to the X2 Project in his post on the addition of GPS in the iPhone:

With Steve Jobs' announcement that the iPhone 3G will have geolocation built-in, plenty of people are excited about finding good restaurants near them or worried about the privacy implications....

X2 Project

read more

Abundant mobility and hacks

Mani Pande — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:16:08 -0700

I am in India conducting research, and as always amazed by the variety of cell phones and hacks that are available. One of our research partners brought my attention to the fact that many people in India have unlocked iphones, and have jail-breaked their iphones to install 'non-Apple" applications. A popular application is twinkle -- a twitter client that includes location based service. Twinkle is very popular with iphone users in India, who use it to twitter. It does not require sending a SMS for twittering. Iphone has not been officially launched in India as yet. It is expected to arrive later this year. But that is certainly not a deterrent for tech savvy Indians who aspire to own the iphones.

Mobile Health

Fast food facts on the go

Vivian Distler — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:40:24 -0700

I love it when our local rag, the Palo Alto Daily News, is the the source for one of my posts. And it's even more fun when a headline is brought to my attention by a colleague while we are in downtown Palo Alto's only "dive" bar. (I hope I don't get in trouble for revealing too much!) And best of all, the story is about a company that I recently discovered and about which I have been meaning to write something.

"Getting your fingers on fast-food nutritional details" ran yesterday. As the lead 'graph says: "Calorie-counting fast-food lovers may be heartened to know there's a new source for nutrition information at their fingertips."

Mobile Health

Have cell phone, will get medical care

Vivian Distler — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:08:49 -0700

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a Business Week headline that warmed the cockles of my Health Horizons blogger heart: "Medical Advances--Through Your iPhone?" The article describes several mobile phone health apps.

Mobile Health

Cell phones and health in the developing world

Vivian Distler — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:36:16 -0700

Jan Chipchase is a "user anthropologist" for Nokia, the Finnish cell phone company; he travels the globe to study how people use and think about cell phones. A recent New York Times Magazine article profiles Jan and examines the role of cell phones in the developing world.

Mobile Health

Have you taken your smart pill today?

Vivian Distler — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:19:53 -0700

Coming soon to a pharmacy near you . . . pills that can monitor when they have been taken and what effects they are having on your body. Michael Chorost, who spoke at IFTF's recent Ten Year Forecast Conference, reports in MIT's Technology Review about Proteus Biomedical's development of in-body computing platforms.

Health Horizons

Grad students designing the future

Vivian Distler — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:07:23 -0700

The Health Horizons Program often uses "iBuyRight" as a signal of the impact of mobile phone technology. It is an application that can provide shoppers with social and environmental information about a product, enabling them to make purchases aligned with their personal values. iBuyRight was developed as a thesis project by some graduate students at UCBerkeley's School of Information.

Mobile Health

Citizen Science meets art in San Francisco

Vivian Distler — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:42:13 -0700

Last weekend, an artist-run organization called Southern Exposure (SoEx) held a hands-on workshop in San Francisco that invited people to "[j]oin a team of researchers, artists, and practitioners in a citizen based participatory field study." Participants took part in "collecting, gathering, and analyzing the urban environment in [the city] using a collection of mobile, networked sensors called sensr: citizen science * air quality.

Mobile Health

Your heart rate monitor watch will soon be obsolete . . .

Vivian Distler — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 21:52:00 -0700

I was cruising for something to blog about when I came across this headline: "DIY pervasive health monitor keeps tabs on your vitals." Do-it-yourself health? Persuasive technology? Six months ago, I wouldn't have had any idea of what those terms meant (nor would you have ever found me blogging). But I have learned a lot during my relatively short tenure at IFTF, and now I can recognize a Health Horizons blog-worthy story when I see one.

Mobile Health

On-the-Go Health for Kids?

Vivian Distler — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 09:28:00 -0700

We explored Mobile Health technology at our Spring Conference (see our forecast and related scenarios under publications)--and we will continue to do so in the coming months.
Mobile technology is more than just a communications channel. It can be used as a tool for self-knowledge, for remote monitoring of medical conditions, and as an interface to access health information.

Mobile Health