Revolution Health's health?

Just as I was starting to look for something to blog about today, I got an e-mail from a client asking what I know about whether Revolution Health is going under or merging or otherwise transforming itself. Launched officially in April 2007, Revolution Health was intended by its chairman/CEO, AOL co-founder Steve Case, to . . .well, revolutionize health care by providing health-related online tools and content from a variety of trusted sources and enabling individuals to take greater control of their health management.

On-the-go heart monitoring

Researchers affiliated with Northern Ireland's University of Ulster have developed a disposable adhesive electrode patch that uses wireless technology to transmit information about a patient's heart and other vital data (like respiratory rate, temperature, and blood oxygenation levels). According to the university's press release,

Cease-and-desist letter sent to California-based personalized genetics startups

California likes to think of itself as a high-tech friendly place, and generally it is. However, Alexis Madrigal reports that the state government has decided to go after personal genetics companies:

Last Monday, the state's laboratory field services group issued 13 cease-and-desist letters to genetic testing companies. Wired.com obtained a copy of the letters (pdf.) from two recipients. And the tough talk in a recent teleconference among regulatory officials confirms the seriousness of the department's intent.

"We [are] no longer tolerating direct-to-consumer genetic testing in California," Karen Nickles, Chief of Laboratory Field Services at the health department, told members of the Clinical Laboratories Advisory Committee on June 13.

Targeted companies include personal genomics startups 23andMe and Navigenics. These services are seen as the leading edge of a new type of health care in which consumers can use their genetic profile to tailor their medical and lifestyle choices. The established medical community, however, is wary of the technology arguing that the medical utility of some tests is unproven. Doctors also complain that direct-to-consumer services bypass them as the gatekeepers and analysts of medical information, which they worry could confuse consumers, not to mention cost them a billing event.

The health department's actions are a direct challenge to the viability of the infant DNA-testing industry, for which physician involvement is shaping up to be a major battleground. As far back as a September 2006 meeting, health department officials were voicing concerns over "nutrigenetic tests that analyze a limited number of genes to give personalized nutritional and lifestyle recommendations."

(via Virginia Postrel's Dynamist Blog)

iPhone and citizen science

Alexis Madrigal throws a link to the X2 Project in his post on the addition of GPS in the iPhone:

With Steve Jobs' announcement that the iPhone 3G will have geolocation built-in, plenty of people are excited about finding good restaurants near them or worried about the privacy implications....

Read more >

"Walking" in Second Life

A Japanese team of researchers, led by Keio University biosciences and informatics professor Junichi Ushiba, has created a system that allows a paralyzed man to "walk" in Second Life.
Wired reports,

Researchers at Japan's Keio University have created an experimental headset designed to monitor brain waves that allowed a man who had been paralyzed for more than 30 years to control a Second Life avatar using only his thoughts.

Read more >

Ecorazzi.com The Latest in Green Gossip

This site was created to showcase the combination of celebrity gossip
and environmental causes! At first it was just an experiment, but it
turned out to be a success for gossip fanatics. It is a great way to
grab different audiences, and providing them with awareness of the
green issue that is occuring today. This site incoporates gossip news
of how, why, and when celebs have interacted in some way, shape, or
form to the green issue.

http://www.ecorazzi.com

Wii Fitness

This week, Wii Fitness will hit U.S. stores. We already know that people -- particularly seniors --

have been using the popular game console to increase their level of physical activity, and others have adopted it as a tool for rehabbing from serious injuries (see this earlier post).

Meat vs. Miles

Carnegie Mellon University's Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews argue in a new report in Environmental Science and Technology that, when it comes to the environmental (especially carbon) impact of food webs, the presence of meat in the diet matters more than the distance the food has traveled.

Fast food facts on the go

I love it when our local rag, the Palo Alto Daily News, is the the source for one of my posts. And it's even more fun when a headline is brought to my attention by a colleague while we are in downtown Palo Alto's only "dive" bar. (I hope I don't get in trouble for revealing too much!) And best of all, the story is about a company that I recently discovered and about which I have been meaning to write something.

"Getting your fingers on fast-food nutritional details" ran yesterday. As the lead 'graph says: "Calorie-counting fast-food lovers may be heartened to know there's a new source for nutrition information at their fingertips."

Have cell phone, will get medical care

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a Business Week headline that warmed the cockles of my Health Horizons blogger heart: "Medical Advances--Through Your iPhone?" The article describes several mobile phone health apps.

Cell phones and health in the developing world

Jan Chipchase is a "user anthropologist" for Nokia, the Finnish cell phone company; he travels the globe to study how people use and think about cell phones. A recent New York Times Magazine article profiles Jan and examines the role of cell phones in the developing world.

Have you taken your smart pill today?

Coming soon to a pharmacy near you . . . pills that can monitor when they have been taken and what effects they are having on your body. Michael Chorost, who spoke at IFTF's recent Ten Year Forecast Conference, reports in MIT's Technology Review about Proteus Biomedical's development of in-body computing platforms.

DNA testing companies come under scrutiny

Both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News broke stories yesterday about impending investigaitons by the Departments of Public Health in California and New York into six online genetic testing companies.

Grad students designing the future

The Health Horizons Program often uses "iBuyRight" as a signal of the impact of mobile phone technology. It is an application that can provide shoppers with social and environmental information about a product, enabling them to make purchases aligned with their personal values. iBuyRight was developed as a thesis project by some graduate students at UCBerkeley's School of Information.

Biocitizens and Advertizing

A recent piece in the NYT BITS blog has some interesting ramifications for our forecasts on biosocial identities and affinities. It discusses a set of “compromises” reached by the Network Advertising Initiative, an advertising trade association.

The lists of restrictions and red-flag categories represented here is about as culturally loaded as you can get, but what drew my attention was the way that biological identities, biological affinities, online collective organization were called out as particularly tricky areas of “behavioral correlation.”