June: An Elegant Way to Protect Your Skin From Sun Damage

Netatmo’s June is a connected cosmetic device that protects skin from sun damage. It is an elegant bracelet that has UVA and UVB sensors to collected sun exposure data and transmit coverage recommendations to a mobile app. The app has a basic understanding of the user’s skin type (asks 6 initial questions including hair color, eye color, how do you usually tan, etc.), and based on the World Health Organization’s skin and sun criteria, the app calculates your daily sun dose percentage.

The device is meant to be a luxury piece that doesn’t interfere with your lifestyle, but instead enhances it. The app sends you alerts when you should reapply sunscreen, can tell you when to wear sunglasses or a hat, and can be pre-set to inform you when your sun exposure reaches certain levels.

Netatmo’s mission is to monitor the environment to create a healthier lifestyle through connected home and connected beauty (other products include a weather station and thermostat). As Eléonore de Fournas, PR Manager explains, “The bracelet is designed for women and targets users who may not always have sun exposure on their minds as they go about their daily lives – when they go to work, have lunch, practice an outdoor activity, or send their kids to school. It’s for women who want to take care of their skin, and prevent skin damage.”

Virginie Golicheff, Head of Communications emphasizes, “It’s really a sun coach – we wanted the design to be nice and more closely related to a piece of jewelry than a tracker. We want to teach people about their skin and educate them around UV exposure.”

It’s surprising how much sun exposure one gets after eating lunch for 30 minutes outside – almost the full 100% if there isn’t cloud coverage or if the user hasn’t applied sunscreen. Eléonore elaborates, “It’s shocking how much sun you get without noticing – and especially when it’s a bit cloudy, people really don’t think about UVA, UVB on your skin – but with June you can see that skin damage happens regardless of direct exposure.”

June has a one month battery life before recharge, which supports the goal of not being too intrusive. It is also water resistant. You can order it now from the website.

StethoCloud: A Connected Stethoscope for Parents and Doctors Alike

Dr. Andrew Lin and Dr. Hon Weng Chong, founders of StethoCloud, have designed and built an inexpensive smartphone stethoscope that can be used by parents and doctors alike. The device is easy enough for a parent to use at home and cheap enough so that a doctor can use it in the developing world to diagnose diseases like pneumonia. The Company started from a winning entry into the 2012 Microsoft Australian Imagine Cup – a student technology competition. StethoCloud has come a long way since their first prototype and Andrew has answers to some of our questions below.

A: How did you decide to create a modern stethoscope?  

AL: As doctors, Hon and I have always believed that in the future, an explosion of data will help medical professionals make better informed decisions, with far more leverage on their time than today. For this to happen, we realized that we needed prolific sensors that can collect the data required. We decided on the stethoscope because the data is extremely rich, containing powerful diagnostic information, which can diagnose a broad range of respiratory and heart conditions. Initially, we entered Microsoft’s Imagine Cup competition as a student project, where we focused on pneumonia.

 

A: What is the vision and mission of StethoCloud? 

AL: Connected diagnostic devices for consumers, and a software platform to help drive in-home healthcare delivery.

 

A: Who is your target audience for the product? 

AL: Initially, we plan to market our product to parents of young children. This is because respiratory illnesses are extremely common (e.g. croup, bronchiolitis, asthma) and a connected stethoscope will become a valuable tool that can help parents get advice remotely, especially on transient events such as asthma attacks. Beyond this, the tool is also useful for those with chronic illnesses or under care.

 

A: What are the main differentiators of StethoCloud versus what is currently available in the market that makes it such an industry game changer?

AL: We have designed the device for consumers and the interface is easy to use. It will be much cheaper than existing devices. In the future, we plan to roll out algorithms that provide analytics and help with decision support.

 

A: How will StethoCloud work with other applications to paint the picture of health for an individual?

AL: It’s early days, but we plan to develop APIs to allow cross-platform integration.

 

Wello: Your Very Own Vital Sign Monitor

Azoi, a healthcare technology company, is now taking pre-orders for their first product release, Wello. Wello is a vital sign monitoring device embedded within a mobile phone case. Users place their fingers on the top and back of the case with the screen held horizontally, display pointed towards them. The Wello app displays captured and calculated health stats, which can also be shared with family, friends, and caregivers. Data include blood pressure, electrocardiography (ECG), heart rate, blood oxygen, temperature, lung function and more. By improving health awareness, the creators of Wello hope that it can help users make more informed lifestyle choices.

According to the World Health Organization, 347 million people have diabetes, heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, and hypertension afflicts nearly a billion people globally. Wello aims to combat these trends by encouraging regular monitoring as a preventative measure, empowering users with the knowledge to identify potential issues and seek advice before they become serious illnesses.

Key Factors Wello Measures:

• Blood Pressure: Monitors blood pressure easily and accurately. More importantly with multiple readings you begin to see patterns that cause spikes or dips.
• ECG: Takes an ECG reading without all the fussy wires. An ECG is nothing but mapping the electrical signals of the heart.
• Heart Rate: Measures and keeps a track of your heart rate or pulse. Your pulse provides glimpses into your state of fitness, potential heart problems or other illnesses.
• Blood Oxygen: Helps measure your blood oxygen levels, which if low can be dangerous.
• Temperature: Quickly and easily reads body temperature with the welcome convenience of tracking it. So you know how a fever behaves over time.
• Lung Function: Reads how much air you can inhale and exhale which may point towards possible obstructions or underlying conditions.

Wello plans to ship in Fall 2014, pending FDA approval.

 

Gero Lab: Using Everyday Movement to Predict Risk of Age-Related Diseases

Locomotome, as coined by the Human Locomotome Project is a set of human locomotive data that can be analyzed to predict human stress levels and proclivity of age-related metabolic or degenerative disorders.

Gero Lab, a new and burgeoning company in this space, has been collecting locomotome data to discover markers of age-related diseases and evaluate the clinical importance of these markers. They have an app that collects initial answers to health questions and then uses activity data from devices like FitBit, Jawbone, and Bodymedia to further cement their locomotome models. Users are then sent metrics on their neurological state and potential health conditions, increasing their awareness of various health factors important for early prevention and lifestyle changes.

Gero co-founder Vera Kozyr answers some of my questions below.

What was the driving force to create Gero? What are the company’s goals?

We were originally studying different biological signals including transcriptome and genome signals, looking for signatures of aging and associated chronic deceases. Then we realized that the locomotome signal is extremely rich and much more convenient to gather, so we adjusted all our mathematical models and algorithms for it. The goal of our company is to create a convenient (non-invasive and seamless) and reliable tool for the early stage diagnosis of different diseases.

How can data collected and used in Gero models be translated into action items for users?

Awareness is very important when it comes to health. Early warnings can be impactful, especially for slowly developing health conditions. For example, life-style changes during the early stages of diabetes type 2 can significantly slow down the development of the disease or even reverse it. In the future, after passing FDA approval, GERO technology could also be used by doctors for preventative measures.

What are some of the most interesting bits of data that you have gathered so far? What is to come?

The key takeaways of our first 3,000 Fitbit study (finished in November of last year) are:

• Motor activity contains signatures of particular chronic deceases (metabolic, psychiatric and neurological)
• Low-resolution trackers (e.g. Fitbit, Jawbone, etc.) can also be used with GERO’s mathematical model with sufficient tracking time
• We are already passed the proof of concept phase to detect particular health conditions with accuracy

We keep working on increasing the accuracy of our algorithms. Along with disease risks and trends, we have learned to detect biological age and gender. At the moment we are focusing on diabetes and soon will publish some of our very interesting findings.

How does the app / data interface help users?

As we are still in the research stage we don’t claim that our app helps users at the moment. It collects activity data and helps to develop our technology. Individual health reports that we will release to our participants of course might potentially help by giving awareness of health conditions and showing their trends.

CarePredict: Monitoring Aging Parents for the Tech Generation

Millions of Americans take care of their aging parents while managing work and raising their own families. These adults are part of the ‘Sandwich Generation,’ and are constantly on call to help ailing family members. One of the toughest and most time consuming activities to do as a part-time informal caretaker is to track behaviors and note subtle day-to-day fluctuations that might hint towards bigger issues. CarePredict, founded by Satish Movva, founder of ContinuLink, is a wearable device company that assists adult children in tracking their aging parents’ health and activities.

The Tempo is the company’s first device, which tracks the wearer’s location within the home and learns their normal pattern of movement. Cleverly named, when there is a potential concerning change to the users daily tempo (in activities such as standing, walking, and sitting), the device notifies all caregivers in a text or email about the discrepancy.

The sensor is easy to wear and detects different motions. This motion data is transmitted wirelessly to the CarePredict beacon, which understands the location of the user and sends all the data from the wearable to CarePredict’s servers for analysis. The data can be monitored from an online account or smartphone app. CarePredict, currently taking pre-orders, is slated to launch next month.

Founder Interview: Jon Pearce, CEO of Zipnosis – Online Diagnosis and Treatment is Here

Zipnosis is an online service that diagnoses and treats common medical conditions, 24/7, by a board-certified clinician. Yes – finally a service that can prescribe you medication to common conditions by just knowing current symptoms and past history.

There are existing companies that introduce telemedicine through complex solutions using live streaming video, focused on diagnosing tough conditions. Zipnosis differs by first entering the market to treat all the millions of people with simple, more common conditions.

As Jon Pearce, CEO of Zipnosis, describes it, “If other telemedicine companies are like Blockbuster, Zipnosis is more like Netflix. We are web based and can be used on any device. We’ve been able to build a company that is a true digital platform between a patient and a provider. We are targeting more than just information – we are focused on diagnosis, treatment and triage.”

Busy growing, the company has gone from treating an initial 8-9 conditions to adding about 40 more conditions last year, and focusing this year on triage and chronic conditions. Zipnosis can be used in 14 states and expanding, and is busy partnering with health systems to expand their diversified base of clinicians. Over time, Zipnosis will broaden from treating common conditions to include chronic ones, such as cardiac disease and hyperlipidemia.

What are users saying? The company has over 90% satisfaction rates. The clinicians prescribe by guidelines, giving better, more consistent quality care. “96% of the patients that we talk to tell 3-4 people because it’s so transformative,” Jon says. “We know it works and it works quickly and accurately. People should not be afraid of the way we are offering diagnosis and treatment. It is rooted in clinical data and successes and it is a safe and effect way to get care.”

Zipnosis is leading the way to a new, leaner and faster way to get answers and treatments to immediate health concerns. Jon assured me that California is on their short list of states they will be expanding to, and I look forward to using them. For those in the lucky 14 states, try Zipnosis the next time you need an answer.

Interview: Kyle Samani, Founder and CEO of Pristine – Healthcare Innovation with Google Glass

When Google revealed Google Glass, the first question I got asked was, “How will this change healthcare?” There is no one better to answer that question than Kyle Samani, Founder and CEO of Pristine, a startup in Austin, TX that develops Google Glass apps for surgery. Kyle is also a healthcare blogger, writing for HIStalk and TechZulu. Kyle answered my most pressing questions about his journey from first seeing Glass, to creating Pristine.

When did you first try Google Glass and when did you know that it would change healthcare?

I wore Google Glass for the first time in February of this year. The light bulb went off instantly because I’d been working in the electronic health record (EHR) industry for 3 years. I spent one year as an engineering team lead, one year as technical sales lead, and one year as product manager for a wide variety of clinical applications (EHR, CPOE, Perioperative care, LIS, RIS, PACS, PAS, Patient Portal, etc), so I got to see the development, sales, and deployment cycles of health IT from a bunch of unique perspectives. With that knowledge and experience, it was immediately clear to me that Glass would drive an array of new point-of-care apps.

Since my background was in EHRs, the original vision for the company was to extend the EHR onto Glass. I gave up on that by mid-May, just as I recruited Patrick, my cofounder and CTO. We threw that vision away because we realized that it would be impossible to overcome HL7 integration challenges. Our first investor was an anesthesiologist, and he really opened our eyes to the opportunities for Glass in the OR. We’ve been actively working on what are now Pristine CheckLists and Pristine EyeSight since late May.

What is Pristine’s mission?

Pristine’s mission: We empower healthcare professionals to deliver safer, more coordinated, more cost effective care by utilizing cutting edge technologies to do what was once impossible.

Essentially, we want to pioneer new technologies in medicine to help healthcare professionals deliver care in ways that were never before possible. Our engineering team has deep technical expertise across almost ever layer of the technology stack, and substantial experience with almost every major field of human computer interaction (HCI), including audio, video, touch, gesture sensing, and more. Our business team knows the modern US healthcare environment, with years of experience working closely for or with payers, providers, and technology vendors. We hold strong views as to where things are going, and we work closely with our engineering teams and the latest technologies to shape what we believe will be the future of care delivery.

You are one of the first companies to innovate in this space. What’s it like being on the forefront?

As exciting as it is to pioneer new technologies, it’s also been quite challenging. For example, one of the greatest impediments to Pristine’s success today is, unfortunately, lack of hardware. Google is not helping enterprise-focused developers such as ourselves; they are completely consumer-focused. We have 10 Glass units today, with 12 or so inbound. Until recently, we really didn’t have enough hardware to roll out Glass widely.

We’re trying to break one of the most fundamental assumptions in care delivery: that you need to be in room X to provide value and care in room X. We need as many hardware units as possible in as many rooms as possible to prove the value. If you or anyone you know has a Glass or some spare Glass invites, can you please email me? It would really help us perform more rigorous testing across a range of care environments.

Besides lack of hardware, we’re dealing with what are pretty common technical issues when you’re on the forefront of technology: buggy hardware and software. Our technical foundation, Glass hardware and a modified version of Android, still have lots of problems, but that’s to be expected. In many ways, it provides our engineers with enticing challenges, although as CEO I wish we encountered fewer technical hurdles.

On the other hand, the business side of things has been incredible. I’m a first time entrepreneur, and I can safely say this has been the single most important, most educational, most fun thing I’ve ever done in my life. I think that rings true for every one of our employees as well. I’ve read about how hard it is to get off the ground and answer the existential startup question. We’ve been incredibly lucky that so many talented people, doctors, provider organizations, and investors have supported us so early on. Very few startups have the opportunity to raise as much capital as we have, and even fewer have the opportunity to so quickly deploy and test across over half a dozen clinical departments in live care environments, including the OR, ICU, and ER.

What’s amazing is that we’re just at the beginning of what can be done. We’re at the cusp of a major hardware renaissance powered by increasingly small yet powerful mobile systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). These SoCs are driving a quantified civilization. Pristine is incredibly excited to figure out how to support providers at the point of care using these new technologies.

Tell us what you are hoping your current Glass products will do for the healthcare system.

We’re trying to shape the next generation of telemedicine solutions. To be clear, we’re not trying to compete with Teladoc or Ringadoc and the dozens of at-home, self-service telemedicine companies that’re springing up. We’re delivering telemedicine solutions when patients are already interacting with care providers.

Mobile cameras, processors, and Wi-Fi antennas are good enough to deliver telemedicine anytime, anywhere, in 1st person. That means that we’re enabling telemedicine and video communications literally everywhere in every care environment. But our ambitions extend far beyond telemedicine. Pristine EyeSight (1st person audio and video streaming) will become the de facto training tool for most jobs that require hands-on work.

In addition to telemedicine and communications, we’re also using Glass to implement process control where it was never before ergonomically possible. Because Glass is inherently hands-free, we can implement checklists literally anywhere in the hospital, and that’s exactly what we’re doing. We believe that checklists should be implemented in any process in which the cost of being wrong is unacceptable: instrument cleaning, drug preparation, complicated tests and procedures, etc.

You are running a pilot with UC Irvine. How has that been and what have you learned?

I’ve personally worked with staff at over 2 dozen hospitals. I can safely say that the staff across every department – IT, surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, ICU, ER, sim lab – at UC Irvine have been the best I’ve ever worked with. They are forward thinking, open to new ideas and new ways of doing things, and understanding that this is a beta product. Despite all of the technical challenges we face, they’ve been extremely supportive and accommodating. We cannot thank them enough for their patience and for helping us refine our software. We didn’t realize how difficult the testing process would be for our solutions: there are literally dozens of opportunities for failure that are completely outside of our control. We have been extremely fortunate to work with a group of people that want to see us succeed.

We have learned a tremendous amount at UC Irvine. First and foremost, audio and video streaming is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve developed just as much supporting technology as we have core audio/video streaming. Delivering a seamless, elegant, user experience on a new form factor requires a lot of thought, a lot of refinement, and a lot of work. The best technology is the least visible. We’ve spent an enormous amount of time working to make the entire user experience – unboxing, setup, training, charging, updating, connecting, communicating, disconnecting, etc. – look easy and seamless. We assume responsibility for everything that directly impacts the user experience across software, hardware, and training and deployment methodologies.

As an entrepreneur, what is one piece of advice you’d give to people who are thinking about starting their own company?

First, I would read all of my blog posts about entrepreneurship. I don’t mean to selfishly promote, but I’ve spent a great deal of time addressing this question and try to provide tips, tricks, and advice for others so that they don’t make the same mistakes I did. I’m certainly not the most qualified to tell aspiring entrepreneurs how to develop ideas, customer development, product / market fit, and some of the other major startup principles, but I have a knack for hacking the world to get things done.

I think the most important thing that I’ve learned is not to give up. Some days are really bad. I’ll develop short-lived doubts. Other days are spectacularly good.

I am, for the first time in my life, accountable not just to one or two other people, but dozens: employees, their families, advisors, investors, partners, and prospects. Everyone has bet on me and our team. Once we’re live with our 1.0 product, I’ll be accountable to tens of thousands of patients that I will never meet.

Whenever something goes wrong, I feel my stomach drop, and I worry that I’m going to let down all of my stakeholders. I cannot describe the feeling, but I can tell you that it’s one of the most unnerving feelings in the world. I literally live and breathe Pristine all day, everyday, and sensing that it could vanish provides for a mental roller coaster ride.

Maintaining stature during challenging times is one of the great signs of leadership. I’m still learning how to do that, but I think it’s one of the hardest and most important things entrepreneurs, particularly startup CEOs, can do.

Founder Interview: Matt Mattox, Co-Founder and VP of Products at Axial Exchange

I spoke with Matt Mattox, Co-Founder and VP of Products at Axial Exchange last week to learn more about Axial’s patient engagement software. They are currently working with 13 health systems, encompassing 70 hospitals – I downloaded the University of Colorado Health app as an example.

The app makes it easy to search for physicians in your vicinity under your health system, track and manage medications, as well as monitor changes in your body – anything from migraines to glucose readings. All of this information (plus more, like syncing your Fitbit), is consolidated into one place.

Matt believes that medication management is the most important feature of the app. “Not adhering to medication is a $100BN+ problem. We believe that if there is an adjustment to meds, the patient should know at once, and be reminded to change his intake.”

So how is this app different from other ones on the market? Matt gives an example, “If a patient has congestive heart failure and is using a weight tracker – his physician should know when there is a spike in weight. When that patient visits his care provider, we make it easy to create and share a formatted report of his health data so his physician can see what’s going on.” On the provider side, hospitals also have access to an analytics dashboard where they can monitor engagement.

As a patient, you might be using an app by Axial Exchange already and not even know it. The company doesn’t promote itself; instead Axial works with health systems to market the app to patients.

I asked Matt if giving a doctor too much patient data could be a bad thing. “We try to make the information count. For example, if a patient has diabetes, there are really only a few important things he needs to remember – don’t drink carbs, don’t eat foods you can buy in a convenience store or gas station – we try to boil down health information into actionable advice. On the tracker front, we don’t anticipate that all our patients will pour over their kidney function data and every lab value, but our providers do want to know if they are sleeping well and if they are taking medications on time and following a diet. Our goal is to focus on sustainable engagement, where clients know that the app is part of the prescription and they use it daily to manage their health.”

Axial is working on designing a disease management application as well, which will offer a clear set of learning and tracking objectives for self-managed care. I’m very excited for Axial Exchange’s growth, and hope the app comes to my health system soon. They truly offer the analytics and services needed to create successful patient engagement and promote healthy living.

Founder Interview: Nirinjan Yee, President and Founder of BreathResearch

Nirinjan Yee, President and Founder of BreathResearch started her company after a series of experiences dating back to 25 years ago. An active outdoor enthusiast, Nirinjan was diagnosed with late stage lime disease. For a couple of years, she became partially paralyzed and her joints were swollen to the point where she couldn’t walk. A blood test showed that she had one of the worst cases of lime disease in Northern California. While being treated with IV antibiotics, unable to move and being told by the medical community that it was too late for her to fully recover, she discovered the art and science of breathing. After practicing for 3-4 hours a day, Nirinjan started to get better, feel less pain and finally was able to fully move again.

Now Nirinjan is back to being super active, hiking, dancing and cycling. She wants to show other people that while breathing is very personal and subjective, it is undeniably linked to your physiology and anatomy. She began a 10 year study on respiratory health, using audio to record and study breathing. Nirinjan found the right engineers to work with and they mapped out a way to turn the quiet sound of breathing into data and metrics, turning their work into the downloadable MyBreath app.

She is now creating a BreathAcoustics All-in-One Headset that combines her current research and development with a new, more exact breath training headset. I asked Nirinjan a few questions about her newest venture.

How does barometric pressure and altitude help form a picture of health?

“Our breath changes with altitude and it is important to measure our environment. People with chronic illnesses will say it is a ‘low pressure day,’ or they’re depressed or achy based on the weather. Breathing and heart rate is connected to our physical and emotional health as well.”

Who do you see using this? Do you have a target audience in mind?

“The goal of the headset is to bring breathing, stress reduction, and the ability to optimize our fitness all in one place. The headset is targeted to consumers who want to incrementally improve their health and fitness, de-stress, and get the most out of their exercise. The headset is also targeted towards athletes who are taking their health and fitness to the next level in their training. The headset can track breathing and heart rate to determine training zones and create customized exercise plans. The headset will be first available for consumer use, while we conduct further studies to take it to the FDA.”

When will the first roll out be?

While it could be sooner, Nirinjan is focused on making the best product possible. The release is targeted for the end of 2014.

What would you like people to know about your vision and the product?

Nirinjan is a designer at heart. She has a strong aesthetic desire to create a company that makes devices that are truly wearable. Her goal is to make products that not only look and feel good, but are high tech and performance driven. As Nirinjan states, “We take breathing for granted, you are either okay or you are not okay. I want to bring all the information that can be mined from regular, daily breathing and make it accessible and easy to understand for people. Breathing is at the very center of our physical and mental health.”

Founder Interview: Akhila Satish, Founder and CEO of CyberDoctor

Akhila Satish, founder and CEO of CyberDoctor, believes in behavioral change through reflection. CyberDoctor just released their newest product, an app called PatientPartner. Fascinated by the connection between communication and science, Akhila wanted to bridge the communication gap between consumers and doctors. In her words, “We are all patients and we are all continuously patients. PatientPartner is not just an application you use when you are unhealthy, in fact we urge you to use it when you are healthy, so that you can strengthen your health awareness skill set.”

PatientPartner is composed of a series of short narrative games that take a user through another person’s life and asks them how that character would handle certain tasks and situations. Then the app asks the user to answer those same questions regarding their own actions. The app takes all these answers and analyzes the users’ selections to give personalized feedback on how the user can improve his/her health.

In recent clinical trials, patients with diabetes who used PatientPartner improved their medication management, exercise habits and eating habits. The app is not disease specific, as Akhila states, “Everything in the app is universal – we are teaching people how to think about general habits. Questions in the app can also be linked to topics beyond health, such as money and spending habits.” I asked Akhila why they decided to do clinical tests – an intensive approach that many app makers skip. She responded, “There are 40,000 apps in the app store, so to differentiate, we have to show that we are an app that is not just fun to play with, but also clinically proven to change behavior – clinically proven to work. We are measuring biological responses and running a trial makes it easier to see if users adhere to medication intake and diet changes, becoming healthier overall.”

What does Akhila hope for? “We want to get PatientPartner out to millions of people. When we looked at the clinical trial data, we actually thought it would be ethically wrong if we did not release it to the public because we want everyone to have access to it.” PatientPartner gives you two scenarios for free. Then, for the price of a latte, you can unlock additional scenarios and features, including access to a prescription drug coupon (up to 45% off on medications), and earn points redeemable for gift cards and other prizes.