The rate at which mobile health care apps are introduced into the app stores of the world is accelerating very quickly.

According to the latest industry data available, there are presently 31,000 health, fitness, and medical related apps on the market  today.

But not all are of value or potentially even safe. A new report from Health Leaders Media explores this persistent concern in the medical community.

“There are hundreds of apps that really work and are completely legitimate,” explains Mark Anderson, CEO of The AC Group, a healthcare IT consulting firm. “But there are also a lot of apps manufactured by snake oil salesmen who promote them with a lot of misleading information.”

Read the full story

Saint Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, Connecticut has announced plans to implement MediNav, a new wayfinding and patient engagement application from Connexient.

A native smartphone and smartpad application optimized for navigating medical facilities, MediNav represents an innovative new brand of digital mapping capable of giving patients and visitors comprehensive indoor directions and a wealth of location based content.

This week, mHealthWatch caught up with Mark Green, CEO of Connexient, to discuss his company’s promising role in the rapidly expanding mHealth industry.

“The concept for MediNav – which was initially centered on the mapping and wayfinding aspects of the product – started developing several years ago, based on our 17 years of experience designing Wayfinding signage for hospitals, through our sister company, GDS Inc.,” Green says. “We started discussions with our clients 18 months ago and many of the key features that ultimately ended up in the released product came out of those dialogues.”

Read the full story

While digital and mobile health technologies continue to be deployed with haste among adult patient populations around the world, providing care and monitoring for infants through eHealth has been a more complicated and controversial practice.

A new study, however, is shedding light on the use of digital and mobile health resources for premature infants, particularly the babies that have already been released from the hospital.

The aim of the study, as highlighted in the BioMed Central journal, was to investigate whether the use of video conferencing or a web application improves parents’ satisfaction in taking care of a premature infant at home.

Read the full story

In a new study produced and published by the GSMA recently, it was revealed that the market for mobile health services will be valued at more than $23 billion by 2017 — with opportunities for mobile operators around the world to capitalize on the demand growing by the day.

In its new study entitled “Integrating Healthcare: The Role and Value of Mobile Operators in eHealth,” the GSMA looks at how the connectivity between individuals and healthcare practitioners can be improved by providing the “means and incentive for healthcare to occur over the mobile channel,” and the role mobile operators have in making and improving those connections.

Read the full story

It’s been announced that ActiveCare, a provider of telehealth and Personal Emergency Response (PER) solutions has entered an agreement to acquire 4G Biometrics — a company who’s technology helps healthcare and insurance providers, as well as employers, manage risk and reduce costs associated with employees diagnosed with diabetes.

Diabetes management, and chronic care management in general, remains a huge issue that mobile and digital technologies are aiming to streamline.  Diabetes trails only cardiovascular disease as the most expensive disease to treat.  4G Biometrics helps people with Diabetes manage their disease and avoid acute events that cost healthcare and insurance providers millions of dollars per year by providing near-real-time blood glucose monitoring through Bluetooth-enabled devices.  When specific data points with any irregularities are spotted, the information is instantly communicated to individuals/care providers based on profiles defined by medical providers.

Read the full story

The long-awaited and anticipated digital health accelerator “StartUp Health” has officially launched it’s Website and opened its doors in New York City.

The new initiative has the bold aim of cultivating over 1,000 digital health startups over the next ten years, which it hopes will generate more than 100,000 jobs.  StartUp Health is chaired by Jerry Levin, former Chairman of TimeWarner.  Levin’s co-founders, Steven H. Krein and Unity Stoakes, founded OrganizedWisdom together, which is a so-called “digital doctor’s office” and patient portal, among other ventures.

Read the full story

The Continua Health Alliance and several of its member companies were in attendance at this year’s CES to show off a variety of innovative personal connected health devices — some of which leveraging new technology such as the Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) and NFC.

The alliance had a large presence within the concurrent Digital Health Summit and was joined by member companies including AnyDATA, Bluegiga, Freescale, Nonin, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Wind River.  All of which demonstrated “Continua Certified” connected health solutions mostly aimed at managing chronic medical conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure and asthma/COPD.

Read the full story