Heavy, expensive and huge text-to-speech machines may be a thing of the past for parents of autistic children or for families caring for a loved one with Lou Gehrig's Disease, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, ALS or who had suffered through a stroke. Mobile health applications are set to disintermediate the bulky text-to-speech machine market, according to a report in USA Today.
iPhone app...
The X Prize Foundation has set its sights on healthcare reform and has launched a $10 million Healthcare X Prize competition to spur innovation from global health innovators. The overall aim of the competition is to increase health care value by 50 percent in a 10,000 person community over a three year period. As we have heard from a number of wireless health thought leaders, remote monitoring...
Nokia's Ovi Store, which is the mobile phone giant's answer to Apple's iPhone AppStore, launched yesterday, and it is severely lacking in medical, health and fitness applications. As we have noted recently, the iPhone now has more than 1,500 health-related applications. Granted, the AppStore had a couple years head start on Nokia, but the Finnish phone maker has taken its time and -- at first...
Yesterday we reported on the voluntary recall that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced for some 160,000 Samsung "Jitterbug" phones sold between March 2008 and May 2009. Some of the phones could potentially fail to connect to 911 services when in an out-of-service area. While the setback is a substantial one for the closely held mobile service for seniors, the company is working...
Senior living community administrators predict that during the next five years "smart home" technology and wireless connectivity will help attract residents, according to The Trends in Senior Living survey conducted by the Mather LifeWays Institute on Aging. The survey polled operators within 107 senior living organizations, which represent some 435 senior living communities in 13 states. The...
"A lot of this is old technology," Bob Miller, executive director of AT&T's communications-technology research department, told the Dallas Morning News. "But we're putting it together in ways that will help millions of people live dramatically better lives."
Miller and his team are looking at ways to connect thermometers, scales, blood pressure cuffs and other "old technology" along with...
GreatCall's Jitterbug service just had a major setback -- the easy-to-use mobile phone service makes use of one phone, the Samsung "Jitterbug" and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a voluntary recall of Samsung "Jitterbug" phones sold between March 2008 and May 2009. That makes for a voluntary recall of some 160,000 Jitterbug phones.
The reason? Some of the phones -- when in...
Swedish consumer electronics company Doro has been targeting the senior market with easy-to-use devices since 1974, and began offering easy-to-use mobile phones in the Fall of 2007. As a result, the company has a lot to teach the wireless health industry, which needs to find ways to successfully engage the older demographic since remote wireless monitoring has the potential to greatly impact that...
5C-Mobile is giving BlackBerry users a new reason to smile -- Bright Smile Toothbrush Timer and Oral Care Guide, a mobile application for the "health-conscious." The application includes a toothbrush timer that indicates how long each section of the mouth should be brushed and also includes detailed oral hygiene guidelines that cover brushing, flossing and general oral care.
The Bright Smile...
Last month at the Health 2.0 meets Ix conference here in Boston, we covered The Pew Internet & American Life Project's health research and digital strategy head Susannah Fox's presentation on the opportunity that mobile devices present for engaging different populations in managing their own care. At the time, Fox noted that despite the opportunity mobile presents, there are pockets of people...
