November 14, 2014 | Eric Wicklund - Editor, mHealthNews
http://www.mhealthnews.com/blog/samsung-adds-partners-its-mhealth-platform
Samsung adds partners to its mHealth platform Samsung has named 23 partners to its Digital Health Platform, placing the South Korean tech giant alongside Apple, Google and Microsoft in the effort to drive provider and payer acceptance of consumer-facing wearables. At its recent developer‘s conference in San Francisco, the company named as commercial partners Cigna, the Cleveland Clinic, Aetna, Merck, Humana, WellDoc, Nike, dacadoo, Edamam, Fitbug, Lark, Preventice and Skimble; joining them as research partners are Bloom Technologies, EarlySense, Stanford University, UCSF, SleepRate, imec, Elfi Tech, LifeBeam, uptick and Sensifree. With Apple already engaged in projects with the likes of the Mayo Clinic, Epic and Duke University over clinical uses for its HealthKit platform, Samsung joins that upper
echelon of vendors looking for concrete examples of how wearables can bridge the gap between the consumer‘s wrist (or some other body part) and the doctor‘s EMR. Samsung recently launched the Simband, Gear Fit wearable and S Health 3.0 Platform, and has unveiled a new set of SDKs for both is Digital Health and Smart Home platforms, with the intention of creating a healthcare ecosystem around its products. In a joint press release, WellDoc CEO Ryan Sysko said Samsung wearables might be an ideal platform to push WellDoc‘s care management products for diabetics. The company recently unveiled BlueStar, a mobile prescription therapy app design to provide real-time guidance for patients with type 2 diabetes and clinical decision support for their healthcare providers.
„Samsung devices are an integral part of daily life for millions of people around the world, including those living with diabetes. At WellDoc, our mission is to support those individuals with personalized, real-time, and contextual guidance to enhance their clinical outcomes and quality of life,“ Sysko said in the release „This collaboration combines the strengths of two leaders in their respective fields in an effort to make a positive impact on the global diabetes epidemic.“ Recent media reports indicate Samsung has also been talking to both Microsoft and SAP about deploying healthcare technology in its wearables. The Korea Times recently reported that Samsung is interested in integrating SAP‘s HANA-powered big data analytics tool, Care Circles.