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LifeScan’s app is for people with diabetes in order to “simply diabetes management.”
In their example, they’re putting themselves into the shoes of Maddie, a 15-year-old girl with diabetes. She tests herself six times a day and injects insulin multiple times a day. First she needs to prick her finger and get her glucose reading. Now the insulin meter can transmit her reading to her iPhone over Bluetooth or over the 30-pin dock connector.
She can then track her readings and mark them appropriately as before a meal or after a meal. Then she can track what kind of food she’s eating and how much of it, plugging it into the iPhone, which will tell her exactly how much insulin she needs after her meal.
Maddie can then re-calculate on the phone if she then needs less insulin because she’s going to exercise later.
With the iPhone app, she can then let her parents know that she’s OK by sending them a message directly through the app that has her glucose level and how she feels.
Apps like LifeScan and Charmr show that there is a real need to understand people and their devices. But that we’re about to see an explosion of personal medical devices targeted at behaviour change and routine monitoring of health. I love this space. What I love more is the emerging platforms like Google Health and HealthVault are trying to solve a BIG difficult problem of electronic health records. There is a huge opportunity to start software and “experiences” companies around this space.
Time to research Ontario government funding in this space. It looks like they have invested the $30M from the Innovation Demonstration Fund. Need to review companies and technologies in the Health Technology Exchange at htx.ca. And learn more about Investment Accelerator Fund. You can get access to software and support from BizSpark. What a great time to start a company! Great people, great ideas and great platforms are all abundant.
I’m inspired about personal healthcare startups.