AT&T is on the hunt for mHealth Talent.

Beginning today in San Francisco, a two-day hackathon will hopefully provide the carrier with the talent and insight it needs from the autism community.

According to published reports this morning, the “Hacking Autism Hackathon by AT&T and Autism Speaks” will thoroughly pour over some 230 app ideas submitted through Autism Speaks’ Facebook page.

Of those entries, 12 were selected to compete in this weekend’s hackathon in four categories – verbal, non-verbal, school-aged and adult – with $20,000 in prizes set to be awarded.

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In an effort to curtail the long list of Americans hospitalized or seriously harmed every year as a result of dangerous drug interactions, American Diversified Holdings Corporation is developing “Drug Check,” which will be an mHealth application capable of identifying and eliminating potentially serious drug interactions.

According to the latest industry data, a large portion of calls received at pharmacies every year are placed because of patient inquiries regarding possible drug interactions. The new app from ADHC could answer many such questions reliably and quickly.

Recent reports from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have indicated a 300% increase in serious injuries and deaths associated with Drug complications. Death have risen from 5,500 to over 15,000 over a recent 7 year period and almost 500,000 serious prescription drug complications were reported.

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A new Citrix ByteMobile Mobile Analytics Report is providing insight into the growing popularity of fitness mobile apps. In fact, when it comes to women’s heath, there’s only one category of apps that seems to be more in-demand – pregnancy apps.

There are a wide range of popular mobile applications specific to personal health – these include: fitness trackers, pregnancy and women’s health monitors, calorie counters, medical information, sleep cycle trackers, and relaxation tools.

On average, the Citrix report shows, 39% of subscribers using one or more mobile health applications use a fitness-specific app. Fitness applications generate the most mobile data traffic around 6:00 p.m.

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The men and women of the U.S. armed forces carry heavy burdens in their important service to the United States. But with the stated goal of providing a measure of in-the-field stress management assistance, the U.S. Department of Defense has released a smartphone mobile application to help service members “use the therapeutic benefits of biofeedback.”

The announcement from the DoD references BioZen as the mobile app in question.

Produced from the Defense Department’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology, the app uses wireless sensors to show users their physical level of relaxation.

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Kaiser Permanente has announced the launch of its latest mobile initiative — a full featured “Health Management” app for iOS.

Like its other mobile offerings, the new app allows members to access many of the same tools already available via its “My Health Manager” tool on kp.org.  Members can email their providers, check lab test results, order prescription refills, manage appointments and more — all from their iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.  This latest move comes on the heals of Kaiser making the largest electronic health record system in the world accessible via smartphones with the launch of its mobile-optimized website m.kp.org.

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It’s been revealed that more than $439M has been poured into 70 different Web 2.0 healthcare startups that develop mobile health apps and tools for online social networking and collaboration in 2011.

In 2010, a little more than $305M was raised for 43 different deals, meaning 2011 showed a 44% increase in dollars invested and a 63% increase in deals funded compared to 2010.  ”We are at the very early stages of an evolution in the entire healthcare system,” Jessica Canning, global research director for Dow Jones VentureSource, told InformationWeek Healthcare. “We are essentially witnessing the democratization of healthcare where detailed information is being collected both from healthy people as well as individuals trying to improve their physical wellness.”

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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.

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