According to a new report from IDC, worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to reach 1.46 billion units with a year-over-year growth rate of 1.6% in 2016.

That’s the projection shared Friday by the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

Although growth remains positive, it is down significantly from the 10.4% growth in 2015, the report explains.

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On Wednesday, Spyglass Consulting Group released its most recent healthcare study entitled Large-scale Smartphone-based deployments enable hospital-wide communications.   

Overall, the study shows that 63 percent of hospitals and health systems surveyed have deployed or plan to deploy a mobile communications platform supporting more than 500 Smartphones over the next 12 to 18 months.

According to a news release, these deployments “address the mission- and patient-critical communications required by nurses and other mobile hospital workers across the enterprise.”

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comScore, a media measurement and analytics company, has just released data from comScore MobiLens and Mobile Metrix.

comScore’s data reports key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry for August 2015.

Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 44.1 percent OEM market share, while Google Android led as the #1 smartphone platform with 51.7 percent platform market share. Facebook ranked as the top individual smartphone app.

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On Monday, Medtronic — a leader in medical technology — announced U.S. commercial availability of MiniMed Connect, a product designed to enable people with diabetes to “discreetly and conveniently” view their insulin pump and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) information on a smartphone.

MiniMed Connect provides greater convenience for people with diabetes, greater peace of mind for their care partners, and more convenient access to diabetes data for healthcare teams.

According to details shared with mHealthWatch, MiniMed Connect also allows care partners to view and monitor this diabetes information via CareLink Personal, Medtronic’s therapy management software (It delivers preset text notifications to care partners when the person with diabetes experiences sugar levels that go too high or too low or when an alarm on the pump isn’t cleared).
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According to a new report from our sister site Mobile Marketing Watch, SMS may hold the key to boosting blood donations.

Per the details shared, blood donation rates are actually on the decline in developed nations around the world. It is for this reason that the Stockholm blood service in Sweden decided to turn to modern mobile communication to let donors know the impact they are making with their donation.

After someone donates blood, they probably never give it a second thought. While patient privacy must be protected, this is not to say that a donor cannot be made aware of when their blood has been used by a recipient.

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U.S. based companies and tech behemoths like Google and Facebook may not be universally welcomed with open arms… but progress is being made.

In China, Google’s fitness application – Google Fit — has made an enormous splash, securing China as its most-successful market since being released, according to a recent report from Bloomberg.

In June, Google unveiled its “Google Fit Platform,” a software suite that connects compatible apps and Android Wear devices, allowing a user to track activity and fitness data. Google Fit tracks activity, collects data from other apps and external hardware, and connects to health-monitoring devices.

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According to the findings of a new report highlighted Friday in the Guardian, self-published authors have ballooned to account for more than 30% of ebook sales on Amazon.com. What’s more, these authors are now earning more ebook royalties than writers who have been published with the world’s five largest publishers.

In no category, however, is the eBook revolution more apparent than health and wellness.

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