Polka's mission is to make your up-to-date basic health information available to you all the time, on the web or your iPhone. They claim that their 'secure aggregation and collaboration service' can help users manage their health. Here is what they offer: My Health - An application to store your basic health information (allergies, meds, diagnosis, emergency contacts, and a twitter-ish 140 char...
Healthcare applications of Twitter keep surfacing everyday. Qwitter (not to be confused with another application by the same name that tracks people who stop following you on twitter) is a smoking-cessation tool built by the Florida Department of Health under a 2008 campaign called 'Tobacco Free Florida'. It works like this- you tweet the number of cigarettes you smoked to @iquit <number>...
Pittsburgh-based BodyMedia makes personal monitoring devices that can help consumers keep track of their physical activity and nutrition. Their products and accessories contain innovative sensors that measure physiological data like heart rate, body temperature, calories burnt, sleep duration, etc . The collected data is then interpreted online to help wearers aim for and monitor a balanced,...
TrialX.org is an fantastic example of how the web enables linking specific demand with relevant supply. The services matches users (patients, affected individuals) to ongoing clinical trials using their submitted personal health information. What a great startup idea. Service demand can be tapped easily since users are searching the web for highly specific keywords (almost all include the...
LifeShirt is a wearable 'smart fabric' that can be used to remotely monitor multiple vital signs. It is made by VivoMetrics, a Ventura, CA based startup founded in 1999. From what I can gather, LifeShirt captures data around heart rate, respiration, posture, activity level, temperature, limb II ECG and can connect to optional peripheral devices for EEG, skin temperature, blood oxygen saturation,...
There are plenty of medical conditions that necessitate dietary changes (Celiac's, Diabetes, etc.) and it's a hassle for the affected individual and/or primary caregiver to manage cooking with restrictions like gluten-free or lactose-free ingredients. MyFoodMyHealth is a startup with the self-stated mission of 'helping you feel better by eating deliciously'. They provide meal plans, recipes,...
Since my last rant was around twitter, I thought I'll follow up with another one around same topic. First notable thing about FoodFeed is that its not really useful (their own words, not mine). Its a service that lets you share your eating habits on twitter. They are still in beta so maybe other features are in pipeline, but honestly, FoodFeed seems to be a solution looking for a problem. So...
OrganizedWisdom describes itself as the first human-powered, doctor-guided search service for health. What the site promises to provide are noise-free, simple but organized search pages that list relevant information on health topics. Its a crowdsourcing model at heart- these pages are essentially hand-crafted search results aggregated by OrganizedWisdom Guides and Physician Reviewers (eligible...
SugarStats is a hawaii-based startup inspired by one diabetics' unfulfilled need to manage his disease data better. Marston Alfred (the site's creator) found the online diabetes management solutions boring and inaccessible, so he embarked on crating a clean, user-friendly website where diabetes could track their sugar levels and network with other affected individuals. They have various...
Fitbit is a startup trying to leverage the rising wellness trend- they manufacture a small device that you can wear throughout the day to find out how much physical activity you did, how well you slept etc. The tiny device sells for $99 and contains a motion sensor (like the Nintendo Wii) that converts 3D motion data into useful interpretations about your lifestyle. In a 7-day period, whenever...