Just got a press release from the fine folks at Microsoft announcing the 15 winners of the Be Well Fund. The Be Well Fund was established to help fund the development of novel applications for HealthVault at non-profit institutions. After an enormous out-pouring of ideas (over 200 proposals submitted) Microsoft raised the fund from an initial $3 million to $4.5 million.
So who were the winners?
Below is the list along with a few comments from which you’ll conclude that I was not all that impressed with the final recipients. With all the possibilities and potential that something like HealthVault may potentially offer in the future (provided they get the data), it looks like the judges took a conservative approach. Would have been nice to see at least a couple of winners with some real out-of-the-box thinking, but alas, not this round.
John:
I too thought there would be more interesting innovations, but obesity, and diabetes are two rapidly growing healthcare issues that are actually treatable and can prevent other co-morbidities such as heart disease, high cholesterol, hypertension, etc…
As far as a “working” medication adherence reminder app, Intelecare.com has been providing medical adherence reminders for three years and touches over 3.2M daily. We have increased length of therapy and helped to lower overall healthcare costs.
Please let me know if you find out anything about the JHU SOM program. I put some feelers out, but haven’t heard who is running the program. They could always use our platform, as it does work!
Best,
Alex