Back in December at the mHealth Summit, the Surgeon General’s office launched a challenge that called on mobile app developers to create apps in three different categories; healthy eating & nutrition; physical fitness/activity; and integrative health and well-being.

In the healthy eating category, joint winners were selected as “equally outstanding submissions,” including GoodGuide — an app that makes it easy to get the information you need about your food, personal care and household products to aid in making healthy decisions — as well as Fooducate, which uses barcode scanning to allow you to scan the products you buy to quickly get information on that food’s health value.

Read the full story

Health plan provider UnitedHealthcare has debuted a new mobile app for iOS devices called “Health4Me,” which provides 24/7 access to a registered nurse, a physician/hospital locator, and access to personal health benefits information among other features.

In addition, the new app features “Easy Connect” functionality that allows members to request a callback from a UnitedHealthcare service representative with a touch of  a screen.  Launched now for iOS devices, the new app will be out soon for Android as well.

Read the full story

New research out yesterday from ABI suggests the market for wearable wireless devices in healthcare will grow to nearly 170M by 2017.

This figure represents a CAGR of  more than 41% based on the market showing just 20.77M such devices at the end of 2011.  ABI’s research also includes wearable sports and fitness devices as well, showing the increased usage of devices that collect and automatically share data online from the likes of Nike, Adidas, Motorola and others.  In addition, mobile handset accessory vendors, consumer electronic companies, fitness management and online service providers are quickly joining a market that’s long been the “preserve of specialist, high-end vendors such as Polar and Garmin.”

Read the full story

Could mHealth be the solution to the US’s healthcare crisis?

The US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin thinks it might be. For this reason, Benjamin is attempting to reframe the ever-growing US healthcare issue in terms of innovations within the mobile healthcare realm. In order to do so, Benjamin launched a month-long competition on December 6, 2011, encouraging the creation of new mobile apps that promote healthy lifestyle choices.

The Healthy Apps Challenge is aimed at moving healthcare reform from the large-scale spending sphere to the small, yet rapidly spreading mHealth application field. By creating a comparatively inexpensive solution, the challenge aims to circumvent the partisan debate surrounding healthcare programs, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise referred to as “ObamaCare”).

Read the full story

Remedy Health Media, a leading health information and technology provider, is now employing mHealth strategies with a new mobile application suite.

Remedy Health Media’s first mobile app MyRefill Rx is designed to cater specifically to consumers with high blood pressure. This condition, also known as hypertension, puts patients at risk for health problems such as strokes, heart attacks, and kidney failure.

In order to combat hypertension, Remedy Health Media has created MyRefill Rx, a native app that is free for both patients and providers. Available for Apple iOS, MyRefill Rx is designed specifically for patients with high blood pressure and is the first of its kind due to its integration of education, tools, medication reminders, and mail order pharmacy service into one package.

Read the full story

CVS Caremark, the largest Pharmacy Health Care Provider in the US, announced the release of their new Android application for medication management.

The new application is available with Android 2.1 OS phones and above, along with the iPhone application that has been available since July of 2010. This application is free in the Android Market, and further broadens their members’ mobile access to securely manage their prescriptions online.

Read the full story

Researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute have developed a new mobile app that represents a pretty impressive breakthrough in mobile monitoring — a solution that doesn’t require any peripheral devices to monitor a variety of vital signs.

Several apps have garnered attention for allowing various levels of mobile monitoring via smartphones, but most are still very basic in nature and require additional devices to take more advanced measurements.  A well-known example is the “Instant Heart Rate” app from Azumio, which recently surpassed 10 million downloads in one year and has received millions of dollars in funding since its inception.

Read the full story