6. Name:
MedApps
Site:
http://www.medapps.net/
Founded: 2006
Location: Scottsdale, AZ
Why it matters: Welcome to the "body area network." This tiny 4-person company that sprang out of a small local software development firm, is working to pull off no less a feat than creating an integrated monitoring solution that creates its own small network around and within a patient. To create this network, which is designed to feed doctors the patient data they need, MedApps is adding broadcasting power and intelligence to common medical devices such as blood glucose meters, pacemakers and scales. These devices are set up to broadcast the information to hardware that MedApps developed that then bounces the data via Bluetooth to the patient’s cell phone. The phone then passes the data to a central server that the doctor can access.
What to look for: For its next act, look for MedApps’ sophisticated broadcasting of information from patient devices to care providers. Instead of focusing the broadcast on just one doctor, MedApps president Kent Dicks says his firm is working with Qwest to do intelligent call routing of the messages, allowing the data to go to whichever clinician or healthcare system is specified as a target at a given point in time. Also, the company’s hardware will soon support essentially all of the blood glucose meters on the market; right now the MedApps hardware only works with Johnson and Johnson’s One Touch Ultra for glucose testing.
