|
| [June 27, 2006] |
 |
FitSense(TM) Poised to Capitalize on Healthcare Reform; Builds Personal Health Data Pipeline
SOUTHBOROUGH, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- June 27, 2006 -- We are not going to wake up one day and find that the healthcare crisis has been solved overnight. It is going to happen gradually, over time, and we will have to leave it to the historians to explain how it all happened, how all of the technology coalesced, how all of the forces converged, and how everything got fixed. With the release of Michael Porter's new book, "Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results," this process may actually move forward in a noticeable way.
The book title says it all: Porter has written, essentially, that the only way for healthcare to change is for all of the competing stakeholders to stop competing with each other and compete, instead, to provide value (positive outcomes) for the end users, the patients.
Porter is extremely influential, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Whether it all happens exactly in the ways that Porter and co-author Elizabeth Olmstead Teisberg lay out in the book, one thing is certain: those companies that provide the infrastructure that will help document patient needs and outcomes will benefit greatly over the coming years.
FitSense Technology(R), Inc. is one of those companies. Since 1997, the Southborough, Massachusetts high-tech firm has been quietly working behind the scenes, developing its pervasive computing and intelligent sensor systems, and working on research projects in order to perfect their product. With their recently formed partnerships with Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey in Newark, and most recently with the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in cooperation with Kaiser Permanente.
"We've ridden it out," says FitSense CEO Thomas Blackadar, "and we're poised to capitalize on what we have built over the last nine years with our ActiHealth(TM) network."
FitSense has essentially built the pipeline through which all health data -- transmitted from people to computers -- will pass. FitSense is the gatekeeper, organizing and validating all the data.
If your company builds products that require the biometric data picked up from the bodies of individuals be transmitted to computers and servers in order to be analyzed, FitSense is there to move the data.
Blackadar has seen a lot of gadgets and systems and products come and go over the last nine years. "The challenge for these companies is the power management and cost of these devices," says Blackadar.
"To make them wearable and user-friendly, they need to be small enough to be unobtrusive and last long enough that you don't have to change the batteries. Once a user has to change a battery or recharge it, they put the broken gadget in the sock drawer and the continuum of care is broken."
"Of course the gadget has to be priced right," concludes Blackadar.
FitSense's patented, low-power, wireless-network technology enables its devices to run off a coin-cell battery like the ones found in watches. These devices last for two years and sell at price points under $50 per user.
FitSense Technology's wearable and portable monitoring system provides the timely motivational feedback to change personal behavior. This wireless system effortlessly collects and transports personal health data that can be viewed instantly by the user as they go through their day. In the ActiHealth network, the body sensors accurately monitor physical activity, calorie burn, weight, body fat, blood pressure, blood glucose, heart rate and more.
About FitSense:
FitSense Technology, Inc., based in Southborough, Massachusetts, is a world leader in wireless health monitoring solutions. The company's ActiHealth network seamlessly connects wearable and portable body sensors and feedback devices. FitSense systems have been deployed from clinical research environments to roadways, on battlefields and in outer space. FitSense continues to lead the charge into the use of pervasive computing and intelligent sensor systems to improve the quality of healthcare and reduce its costs. For more information, please visit www.fitsense.com.
FitSense Technology, FitSense, the FitSense Logo and ActiHealth are registered trademarks of FitSense Technology, Inc.
(C) 2006, FitSense Technology, Inc.
[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
|
Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO West, September 16-18, 2008. Los Angeles, California.
