Medical mobile apps can be be very useful in health care, but if the FDA gets involved and demands approval before they launch — it takes a medical device about three years to get approval — developers might just give up on them. The Washington Times reports.
...For example, a drug manufacturer makes a mobile app to remind patients when to take their medications and as a monitoring device for blood glucose levels for diabetics. A pharmacy benefit manager makes a mobile app to remind patients of prescription refills. These apps are convenient and provide valuable services to patients who seek to better manage their health. Importantly, the apps are cheap or free for consumers, and cost little to develop and distribute. A win for everyone, right?
Not if the FDA gets involved. The average time to approve a medical device is about three years and can cost upward of $75 million. In the software market, that is a lifetime. Additionally, if mobile apps are regulated as medical devices, they will be subject to the health care reform law’s 2.3 percent medical-device tax, raising prices as taxes are passed on to consumers. Free apps may no longer be free.
Constraints on speed to market and increased regulatory costs combined with tax-driven price increases may cause developers to move on to other, less burdensome endeavors.
... The study reviewed 34 SMS applications (excluding those not launched in developing markets or that focused on disease prevention) but only five had made available evaluation study findings.
The researchers stated that most of the applications they reviewed were pilot projects “in various levels of sophistication” with “modes of intervention varying between one-way or two-way communication, with or without incentives, and with educative games.”
Of those five SMS applications that did have evaluation findings available, the researchers said that the “primary barriers identified were language, timing of messages, mobile network fluctuations, lack of financial incentives, data privacy, and mobile phone turnover.”
Efficacy studies for all mobile health services — not just those for developing markets — is shaping up to be one of the big trends of 2012.
As tech writers predict that Apple will open up Siri to third-party apps as early as this summer Poynter.org reports on how voice recognition technology could change the way we consume news.
... Users, for instance, could ask Siri to read the main story in The Economist aloud. Or they could ask, “What are the latest headlines from The Economist?” and have Siri read off the latest news. Users could then ask Siri to open up a particular story that they’re interested in. Voice technology, Oscar Grut, managing director of digital editions at The Economist., could also make it easier for users to leave comments on The Economist’s website while on the go.
Raluca Budiu, user experience specialist at the Nielsen Norman Group, said voice technology makes it easier to input information, which is important on mobile.
"Mobile devices are used in a variety of contexts, and it’s often easier to speak than to type,” she said via email. “Plus, typing on the small screen is tedious and error-prone."
A pilot project gets underway soon to test whether mobile phones can be used to help educate the poor. It’s estimated three quarters of the world’s poor have access to mobile phones. Voice of America reports.
The project announced at the recent World Economic Forum will use an app called AppBridge to help alleviate poverty and improve education.
The idea is to link software developers with communities and non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. The pilot project is led by a WEF community called Young Global Leaders. It’s made up of about 700 people under age 40 from business, civil society, government and academia.
The early apps are expected to provide skills training.
“In some cases,”Margo Drakos, founder of AppBridge said, “these are going to be very much technically oriented skills, like learning simple automotive or simple electrical or simple plumbing.
Apps could also be used to link entrepreneurs with micro-credit lenders or with markets. “In some cases, women are not able to go and sell their goods from their home unless they know that the store is open and the stores don’t open at a consistent time. So, something as simple and basic as having an alert when the store is open for them to be able to leave their home and go sell their goods,” she said.
The global market for mobile health applications for smartphones is expected to nearly double in 2012, rising to $1.3 billion, according to a new study. Medcity News reports via @jranck.
While a projected doubling in growth is certainly impressive, it pales in comparison to what the mobile health apps market experienced in 2011, when it grew seven-fold to $718 million, according to research2guidance, a German firm that specializes in research into mobile markets.
Nonetheless, the market for mobile health apps is in its “embryonic state” and has plenty of room for growth. The market’s anticipated $1.3 billion size in 2012 is only a fraction of the overall $6 trillion global healthcare market, according to the report.
A new app for iOS called Face Unlock scans your face to unlock your phone. Owners of the new Ice Cream Sandwich-equipped Galaxy Nexus already have "Face Unlock" on their phone and it should hit the AppStore "later this month."
This sounds interesting. Apple has been granted a patent for allowing users to switch to an app while taking a call.
According to CBS News, patent number 8,082,523 called "Portable electronic device with graphical user interface supporting application switching" was granted to Apple.
No one in their right mind would pay $30 a year for Tetris, right? Right?
Electronic Arts thinks people will. The publisher is relaunching Tetris for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, with an optional subscription for extra features - performance-enhancing perks, faster rank progression and exclusive content, Gamasutra reports via Technologizer.
The CTIA Mobile Application Rating System with ESRB will utilize the well-known and trusted age rating icons that ESRB assigns to computer and video games to provide information about the age-appropriateness of applications.
AT&T, Microsoft, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless are the founding members of the rating system, and other storefronts have indicated their interest in joining.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple Inc. is now accepting payment in Chinese yuan for users' App Store downloads, the company's latest move in what has become a key growth market.
Customers of more than 20 Chinese banks can now make payments to an App Store account to buy games and other software applications for their iPhones, iPads and iPods.
The change makes it easier for users in China to pay for downloads. They previously needed a dual-currency credit card—a requirement that led many to either hack their iPhones in order to use applications from other sources, or make purchases in the App Store using false identities and fraudulent gift cards.
An Army pilot program is putting smart phones in the hands of soldiers as a warfighting tool. But the project challenges traditional Army command culture as well as the military industry. The Christian Science Monitor reports.
It was a simple idea – allowing soldiers to use the smart phones they're familiar with to be more connected on the battlefield, whether to check maps or relay information. But it has profound implications for the military.
For the soldiers, the smart phones have already begun to unleash torrents of ingenuity, with some designing new soldier-friendly applications, such as links to the video feed of the base security camera.
For the Army, the smart phone pilot program points to a culture shift that would not only put new streams of intelligence into the hands of soldiers in the field but also give them the chance to evaluate that data – blurring the lines between officers and those they command. And it is sending shivers though the defense industry, which has long had a monopoly on providing military technology.
By offering effectively free text messaging, independent of the type of smartphone being used, the WhatsApp Messenger has quietly climbed to the top of the app sales charts across the world. And it has achieved this without any spending on promotion or marketing. The Wall Street Journal reports.
The achievements of WhatsApp are certainly not based on the extrovert personalities of the company’s founders. They have only now given their first ever newspaper interview, to the Financial Times.
“The product is probably bigger than we are as a company,” co-founder Jan Koum told the FT… “But our personalities are such that we don’t seek a lot of press and attention. We didn’t reply to press enquiries until two months ago.”
Last month, WhatsApp quietly announced that a billion messages were sent by its users in a single day. Since launching in July 2009, WhatsApp has slowly grown by word-of-mouth and the same simple viral mechanism that fuelled Skype: both sender and receiver must own the app.
After reaching 1m users by the end of 2009, Whatsapp’s downloads increased tenfold during 2010. The company does not reveal its current user numbers but analysts assume it is in the tens of millions.
The idea of meeting someone on the fly through a mobile app based solely on proximity may seem, at first, like a risky proposition. But the operators of these services say they are aware of the potential pitfalls and allow users to control how much information they divulge. And users say it’s another step in the continuum of courtship — always fraught with peril — from traditional matchmakers to personal ads to online dating.
For every developer making millions in Apple's app store, there are thousands who've had their dreams smashed into a million little pixels. What makes the App Store so popular with developers--and how can you succeed? FastCompany on one developer's tale of hitting the Apple jackpot.
... It’s this label “gold rush” that has been most often applied to the App Store. The potential for success, and risk of failure, is so great that in many ways the App Store has provoked a gold rush among developers. Although the successes are spectacular, the failures are apocalyptic.
The mainstream press focuses on the glorious few and gives very little attention to the money being lost on the App Store--a problem compounded by the embarrassed silence of those struggling to turn a profit on their work. In a climate where approximately 540 apps are submitted for review every day, it’s easy to see why the Appillionaires are an exclusive and rare breed.
An analysis of mobile financial services usage in the US shows that 32.5 million Americans accessed mobile banking information on their devices at the end of Q2 2011 in June, representing 13.9 percent of all mobile users.
The comScore study also revealed that 12.7 million mobile users reported using banking apps, showing a notable increase of 45 percent from Q4 2010.
TheNextWeb reports that Google has launched its Person Finder service in Turkey following yesterday’s 7.2 magnitude earthquake which has killed at least 217 people and injured a further 350.
First launched to assist with the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, Person Finder offers tools that allow people to publish missing person reports and other individuals or organisations to offer information that helps find them. The tool can also be embedded in third-party websites.
By way of apology for a service collapse that left millions of BlackBerry users around the world without service for up to three days last week, the device’s maker, Research in Motion, said Monday in a press release that it would offer a $100 credit for select apps in its online store.
Technology has almost done away with handwritten letters, tollbooth collectors and telephone operators. And, as location-based social networking apps become more popular, it's possible it may also do away with the handshake, according to stuff.
Geolocation mobile phone applications, programs that use a phone's GPS to allow its user to locate and meet strangers in their vicinity, are revolutionising the way people meet. Not only do they automate the process of finding friends, they're also changing the places we find them.
"It's giving us eyes where we didn't have eyes before," said Mark Pesce, a digital cultures academic who specialises in the "hyperconnected" future.
"I can look into a room and know nothing about that room, but if I have Blendr [a social networking app], it's like X-ray vision. I can see all the people who are up for meeting someone new, all the people who went to a school near me, all the people who speak French."
Four out of five practicing physicians use smartphones, computer tablets, various mobile devices and numerous apps in their medical practice, according to a new report from Jackson & Coker. HealthCareITNews reports.
The report, titled “Apps, Doctors and Digital Devices,” presented the results of several recent studies that investigated the use of smartphones, mobile computing devices and a wide variety of software apps by physicians in different specialties.
Here is the study’s breakdown of physician specialists’ usage of digital technology in medical practice:
An iPhone app that measures the user's heart rate is not only a popular feature with consumers, but it sparked an idea for a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher who is now turning smart phones, and eventually tablet devices, into sophisticated medical monitors able to capture and transmit vital physiological data.
A team led by Ki Chon, professor and head of biomedical engineering at WPI, has developed a smart phone application that can measure not only heart rate, but also heart rhythm, respiration rate and blood oxygen saturation using the phone's built-in video camera.
The new app yields vital signs as accurate as standard medical monitors now in clinical use.
Researchers at Boeing and MIT used smart phones to control miniature unmanned aerial vehicles in real time – despite being separated by 3,000 miles.
These applications could allow [drones] to be used more effectively for tasks that are dirty or dangerous, as well as for missions that may be too long and tedious to have a human be continuously at the controls,” the company said on its website.
Mobile phone applications sometimes pose “hidden threats to consumers” and could be subject to greater control, regulator PhonepayPlus has said, reports The Telegraph.
The UK regulator of premium rate telephone services said that it had already taken action on apps which maliciously charge consumers without their knowledge or consent.
In one example, a ‘free battery saver’ app contained malware – identified by PhonepayPlus monitoring – that accessed the phone’s text message function and allowed texts to be automatically sent and received. Text messages were then sent that subscribed consumers to a premium rate subscription service without their knowledge or consent.
The service was immediately shut down and an independent tribunal subsequently imposed a fine of £135,000 ($210,000).
Scientists are developing healthcare-related smartphone apps that could actually save lives. The new apps are designed to help doctors by integrating with medical devices, enabling the smartphone to become the tool for data handling, analytics, visualization and communication. Tibco reports.
The prototype device lets doctors extract small amounts of cells from a mass inside of a patient, analyze the sample immediately, get the results in an hour, then give the results to other doctors as well as quickly put the information into the patient’s medical records rapidly. And the device only costs $200.
Although the microNMR is a great device in its own right, when it’s connected to a smartphone it also solves another screening dilemma: rapid and accurate analysis, which means doctors can extract cells from the patient and analyze them immediately instead of sending them out to be tested.
Katrin Vercla, who runs New York-based nonprofit organization MobileActive.org. won a grant from the State Department and produced a cellphone application called In the Clear. It includes an erase button so activists can instantly delete sensitive information, and a panic button that sends out a pre-written text message — "I've been arrested!" — including coordinates of the location.
The application is scheduled for official release this month, but test versions have already been distributed informally, phone to phone.
According to Libération, the app developed by Johann Levy, is a list of over 3000 celebrities from over 50 countries - identified as "Jewish (by their mother)" or "half-Jewish (by their father)- grouped into categories like film, musique, business, politics, sciences, journalists, athletes Nobel Peace Prize winners...
Freshlist connects sellers and buyers of local produce so nothing goes to waste. Fast Company reports.
This past weekend, adventurous developers were invited to participate in the Cleanweb Hackathon, a competition that challenged entrants to develop apps in just 24 hours--everything from Chrome plug-ins to cell phone applications--that allow users to use natural resources more efficiently. One of the more intriguing winners of the hackathon was Freshlist, a text-based marketplace designed to help people buy and sell produce in real time.
Created by Hoa Huyn and Freshr founder Joshua Rosen, the app uses the Twilio API for text messaging to easily allow people to make transactions.
Here's how the marketplace works: A buyer texts their inventory (say, 20 apples) to a list of buyers. A nearby buyer types "list" and gets a list of everything being sold in the area. The service uses GPS to locate buyers and sellers, so nearby produce is highlighted. When a buyer is ready to make a purchase, the seller receives a text with the buyer's phone number and deletes their items from the inventory list.
An Angry Birds theme park opened in China, highlighting the game’s popularity and giving its creator another way to profit from the mobile app, reports Forbes.
The Window of the World park recently welcomed visitors into the Angry Birds section of its Changsha-based attraction, offering them a chance to slingshot plush birds at green pig balloons ensconced in toy brick castles.
However, the park set up its exhibit without consulting Angry Birds maker Rovio, which would allow the Finnish company to file an intellectual property infringement lawsuit.
Angry Birds does not appear angry at Window of the World, however, and may forge a profitable partnership instead.
Reuters reports that The Financial Times has pulled its iPad and iPhone apps from Apple's App Store after losing a battle to keep control of customer data obtained through subscriptions.
Apple has recently begun to insist that subscriptions to apps that it hosts must go through its own store, giving Apple ownership of valuable data about customers from those transactions, as well as a 30 percent cut of revenues.
The Pearson-owned FT and Apple had been in negotiations for months but ultimately failed to reach a compromise, an FT spokesman said on Wednesday.
Medical mobile apps can be be very useful in health care, but if the FDA gets involved and demands approval before they launch — it takes a medical device about three years to get approval — developers might just give up on them. 
...For example, a drug manufacturer makes a mobile app to remind patients when to take their medications and as a monitoring device for blood glucose levels for diabetics. A pharmacy benefit manager makes a mobile app to remind patients of prescription refills. These apps are convenient and provide valuable services to patients who seek to better manage their health. Importantly, the apps are cheap or free for consumers, and cost little to develop and distribute. A win for everyone, right?
As tech writers predict that Apple will open up Siri to third-party apps as early as this summer 
The global market for mobile health applications for smartphones is expected to nearly double in 2012, rising to $1.3 billion, according to a new study. 
No one in their right mind would pay $30 a year for Tetris, right? Right?
According to 
By offering effectively free text messaging, independent of the type of smartphone being used, the 
For every developer making millions in Apple's app store, there are thousands who've had their dreams smashed into a million little pixels. What makes the App Store so popular with developers--and how can you succeed? 
Technology has almost done away with handwritten letters, tollbooth collectors and telephone operators. And, as location-based social networking apps become more popular, it's possible it may also do away with the handshake, according to 
Four out of five practicing physicians use smartphones, computer tablets, various mobile devices and numerous apps in their medical practice, according to a new report from 
Mobile phone applications sometimes pose “hidden threats to consumers” and could be subject to greater control, regulator 
Scientists are developing 
The 
