While the number of mHealth apps continues climbing rapidly, and the largest chunk are geared toward patients, a new crop of innovators is also expanding to serve hospitals and medical groups.
Startup Health has announced that 13 companies have joined its latest digital health incubator portfolio, and a look at the roster shows that providers might want to keep an eye on more than half of them.
While only one is technically listed in StartUp Health’s "provider solutions" subcategory - MedCloud’s WebClinic platform for sharing health information - the others fall into practice management and patient engagement.
Not all the apps categorized as patient engagement will appeal to providers, to be certain. But some do. Take Medtep, for instance. The service unifies “passive and active data and presents it to the patient and healthcare professional” for monitoring and prevention.
[See also: Ebola outbreak — where are the mHealth apps?]
Personal Medicine Plus is an app that doctors can use to “activate” patients to delay the onset of diabetes in pre-diabetic patients.
In the Big Data subcategory, Kuveda helps oncologists “provide effective therapeutic cancer treatment,” while the nutrition realm includes Nutrify, which describes itself as a “diet planning tool for hospitals.”
On the practice management side, Doc Engage bills itself as Healthcare CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for multichain hospitals and clinics, according to its Web site.
And Jaystreet Technologies helps providers manage patient scheduling by automating the process of filling cancelled appointments.
Dubbing the entrants "healthcare transformers," Startup Health CEO Steven Krein said in a prepared statement that the “diversity of talent is reimagining healthcare” to solve critical problems with new business models and technologies.
Consumer-oriented startups joining the incubator include AprilAge, an app for visualizing how one might age without changing health behaviors; Curatio, with its software for helping patients find other people with similar conditions; Fit4d, for improving adherence to diabetes medications; LifeBio, a tool for writing one’s own healthcare biography; Meals to Heal, which helps people with chronic conditions customize nutritional plans; and Tome, a gamification play for connecting office furniture to corporate wellness.
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Product roundup: 10 mobile apps for evidence-based medicine
Predictions: What mHealth might achieve by 2020
Infographic: How GoogleFit, HealthKit and Sami all stack up
