Seventeen years after its inception, WebMD remains one of the go-to resources for basic health and diagnostic information (and hypochondria enablement) on the Web. Born at the height of the Dot-com Boom, WebMD is on a very short list of companies that were able to not only endure the ensuing crash, but go on to achieve profitability, a billion-dollar market cap and maintain their position as a market leader — even today.
A new startup hopes to spin drug candidate straw into medicinal gold by scouring data from failed clinical trials of Alzheimer’s treatments and identifying patient subtypes for whom the drugs may actually work. Alzheon, a Boston-area company, was founded with the belief that recent gains in the scientific community’s understanding of the disease, enabled by new technologies for genetic analysis and neuroimaging, can shine light into a vast morass of failed clinical trial data.
Un equipo de emprendedores navarros ha lanzado el proyecto Vitale, una aplicación móvil y web que utiliza algoritmos para ofrecer entrenamiento personalizado, con más de 600 millones de ejercicios. El servicio, supervisado por médicos, está dirigido tanto a usuarios particulares como a centros de deporte.
Kwido es el nuevo producto de la empresa vasca Ideable, una evolución de su plataforma para la teleasistencia de personas mayores Eldersarea. El sistema, que incluye la monitorización de parámetros de salud y medicación así como actividades de ocio, se presentó en Toledo en el Congreso CENTAC.
A new biotechnology company will take over human trials of two gene therapies that could offer one-time treatments for a form of childhood blindness and hemophilia B.
Smartphones are set to take center-stage in mHealth, complimenting traditional stand-alone mHealth monitoring. A new report from UK-based Juniper Research predicts the next five years will see a major advance in smartphone-based mHealth, where hardware attachments link to a companion app on a smartphone.
The report, ‘Mobile Health & Fitness: Monitoring, App-enabled Devices & Cost Savings 2013–2018′, forecasts that there will be 96 million users of app-enabled mHealth and mobile-fitness hardware devices by 2018, up a total of 15 million on this year. In the healthcare sector, app-enabled mHealth will be used to drive services ranging from remote patient monitoring to mobile ultrasound services.
San Francisco-based Fitbit, which offers various clip-on and wristworn activity tracking devices as well as a connected weight scale, has raised $43 million in its fourth round of funding, from three new investors. A rumor started by TechCrunch back in March claimed that Fitbit had raised just $30 million in its fourth round and at a valuation of $300 million or more. Fitbit’s new backers include Softbank Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and SAP Ventures. Fortune’s Dan Primack reports that SoftBank led the round.
