When Apple first announced ResearchKit, it was met with a fair amount of skepticism about whether the data collected via smartphones would be robust enough to be useful. But just a few scant months after that announcement, it seems many in healthcare are at least paying attention to the possibilities of smartphone-based data collection in general and ResearchKit in particular.
Last week the...
Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is using mobile health tools in a small study -- just six subjects -- that could lead to there more widespread use in clinical trials. The company is working with data startup Medidata and sensor makers Vital Connect and ActiGraph to evaluate the impact of wearable sensors in clinical trial settings.
“Working with GSK on this initiative has provided us with...
Pharmaceutical companies have a lot of apps in the market, and have been making apps for a long time, but their apps aren't seeing downloads and usage on par with the apps from other industries. That's the conclusion of a new report from Research2Guidance (R2G), which analyzed more than 725 apps from 11 pharma companies.
According to R2G, the top pharma companies have 65 apps in the Apple and...
A new report from IMS Health on the use of social media by pharmaceutical companies finds that among the top 50 pharmaceutical companies, half don't engage with consumers and patients through social media. But of those that do, IMS found that Johnson & Johnson emerged as a clear leader. It scored a 70 on IMS's Social Media Engagement Index. The next highest score, from GlaxoSmithkline, was...
Source: Ruder Finn mHealth Report
Several surveys were released this past week at -- or coinciding with -- HIMSS, focusing on different areas of consumer engagement in digital health. The Atlantic surveyed 1,000 US residents, finding that only 12 percent had emailed or texted their doctors. A Ruder Finn survey of more than 1,000 US adults found that 16 percent of smartphone and tablet users...
Nashville-based Agile Health, a B2B developer of mobile health interventions, announced a major upgrade to its Kick Buts smoking cessation program. Kick Buts is a text-messaging intervention based on software company HSA Global's STOMP platform, which was shown in a 2011 randomized trial in the UK to double successful quit rates over a control group. Agile licenses Kick Buts, along with other...
Merkle, a customer relations management (CRM) company has acquired San Francisco-based 5th Finger, a mobile marketing and mobile health vendor for an undisclosed sum. While 5th Finger has a number of big retail brands as clients, including Jos. A Bank and Safeway, it has also powered Pfizer, Medtronic, and GlaxoSmithKline's mobile health initiatives.
The company set up a text messaging-powered...
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has offered up a new, free asthma management app, called MyAsthma, for iPhone and Android users in the UK. The app's core offering is an Asthma Control Test (ACT), which is a simple 30-second test that provides users with an index score for how well they are managing their asthma overall. UK-based Replay Digital developed the app for GSK. Dr. Mike Thomas...
GlaxoSmithKline has teamed up with Sproxil to use its Mobile Product Authentication (MPA) codes, which is a text messaged based drug verification system, in Nigeria, according to a report from SecuringPharma.com. GSK is reportedly using the system for its widely-used antibiotic product, Ampiclox 500mg, which sells about 2 million units in the country each year. This is the first foray into SMS-...
We mentioned a report last week from the Digital Pharma Blog that Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Merck had each removed apps from the Apple AppStore in recent months. While many others covering this story attributed the move to a potential rethinking on the value of apps, the Digital Pharma Blog attributes many of the withdrawals to mergers the companies went through during the past two years...
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