Two new Fordcastle conference presentations: TedMed & Quantified Self
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 10:22AM Here are summaries of presentations from Fordcastle's attendance at two recent conferences in the mobile and health space: TedMed and Quantified Self Europe.
New York City: a health-tech hub by 2020?
Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 11:44PM 
Photo: Flickr / Moriza
Two of the biggest growth trends over the coming decades are health and technology, the epicenters of which are generally considered to be Boston and Silicon Valley respectively. So, is it even reasonable to ask whether New York can be a ‘health-tech hub’ by 2020, as a number of people have been doing recently? For this discussion, health tech is considered a loosely defined term that incorporates health IT, mobile health and many of new consumer-empowered solutions connected with the ‘Health2.0’.
health tech, innovation, new york in health, innovation New Vodafone report on mHealth
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 5:14PM 
Vodafone has just released a report on mHealth as part of its Health Debate. The report explores ways in which mHealth has succeeded, and ways that barriers to adoption by users still remain. Despite the considerable interest and coverage in the space, many of the solutions are still at the small scale. Fordcastle was asked to be part of the team, and we wrote about mHealth services in developed countries, and some common factors for success.
barriers, mhealth, mobile health, vodafone in mhealth Finally, I understand what's wrong with Google+
Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 3:43PM There's something delicious about peanut butter manifestos and this latest one from Google is a corker. Here's Google+ nailed:
Rip Rowan - Google+ - Stevey's Google Platforms Rant I was at Amazon for about?:
Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that's not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone.
google in innovation Behavioral economics comes to health care
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 11:53PM One of the most interesting developments in the search for disruptive solutions that lower costs and improve quality is the arrival of behavioral economics to the field of health. People who can help companies design systems to nudge populations in the right direction will be increasingly sought after. From this week's Economist - Getting on the treadmill:
Perhaps surprisingly, the most interesting incentives have been developed in an emerging economy: South Africa. The Discovery group, based in Johannesburg, has crafted a programme called Vitality that applies the air miles model to health care. You earn points by exercising, buying healthy food or hitting certain targets
Nokia finally getting into mobile health
Monday, September 26, 2011 at 4:48PM 
This is something we talked about a lot during my time there, but it never really took off. India is a natural place for them to start as they had a market share in excess of 75%, but as Android takes off there, it may be getting a bit late for them to develop a natural social network through their user base.
Nokia Announced Mobile Health Initiative:
New Delhi: Nokia India, in association with Arogya World, has announced a diabetes prevention mobile health initiative in India. With this Nokia aims to reach one million Nokia Life Tools consumers in rural and urban India in the next two years through text messages on diabetes awareness and prevention available in multiple languages. This initiative will use mobile phones as a vehicle to combat chronic non-communicable diseases like diabetes.
india, mhealth, mobile health, nokia in mhealth Reverse innovation goes green
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 6:42PM One of my favorite innovation concepts is 'reverse innovation' - where smart ideas get developed first in developing countries, because they have additional constraints that require more creative solutions. This week's Economist refers to a recent report that identifies the same thing happening in the field of sustainability. I'm rather optimistic about our planet's ability to support 9bn people by 2050 without becoming a desert wasteland, and this kind of story makes me feel ever more so.
Schumpeter: Green growth | The Economist:
A new study by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) identifies 16 emerging-market firms that they say are turning eco-consciousness into a source of competitive advantage. These highly profitable companies (which the study dubs ?the new sustainability champions?) are using greenery to reduce costs, motivate workers and forge relationships. Their home-grown ideas will probably be easier for their peers to copy than anything cooked up in the West. The most salient quality of these companies is that they turn limitations (of resources, labour and infrastructure) into opportunities. Thus, India?s Shree Cement, which has long suffered from water shortages, developed the world?s most water-efficient method for making cement, in part by using air-cooling rather than water-cooling. Manila Water, a utility in the Philippines, reduced the amount of water it was losing, through wastage and illegal tapping, from 63% in 1997 to 12% in 2010 by making water affordable for the poor.
Economist article on mHealth - it's getting real
Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 7:29PM I had missed this when it came out in November last year. Mentions some of the companies I'm now familiar with - Dalberg Advisors, Weltel (not named, but it was their SMS HIV study that was the first data point) and Welldoc. I've been working in the mobile space for almost ten years, yet I've never heard the pun "M-powered" until now. Thanks to the folks at St. James.
Quoting Bill Gates, they agree that the next wave of innovation is going to come not from the west, but from developing countries.
Wireless health care: M-powered | The Economist:
No doubt a dose of scepticism is warranted about m-health. But given the growing evidence of its usefulness and the new business models from emerging markets, there is reason for hope too. As Mr Gates pointed out this week, ?Middle-income countries are where most innovation in health care is going to come from.?
bill gates, dalberg advisors, mhealth, the economist, welldoc, weltel in mhealth Fluorescent tattoos: The latest innovation in a long, long journey towards non-invase blood monitoring
Sunday, July 24, 2011 at 10:26PM 
I was sent this story about a novel tattoo for detecting glucose in blodd, from bostinnovation.com:
Northeastern professor Helen Clark and her team have created a tattoo that can track sodium and glucose in the bloodstream using a modified iPhone.
charlatans, diabetes, non-invasive monitoring, tattoos in diabetes, mhealth, mobile Mobile trends
Sunday, July 17, 2011 at 11:14PM We put together some trends work for a client in the health-care space, here's a selection of the mobile trends.