Five technologies for older adults from the 2014 mHealth Summit

The mHealth Summit held last week was an ever-more HealthIT (along with Digital Health and mHealth brethren) and the mobile/app aware, digital vision for the future, an extravaganza of technology advancement -- sounding vaguely familiar. Hey, there’s the renamed Patient Centered Medical Home, at this conference, called the Intelligent Medical Home). There were all of those Games for Health, behavior change, patient engagement, care coordination, and quite a few pharma-sponsored sessions. As is typical of an event like this, a plethora of investment-related, venture fund and startup-type sessions could be found.

The agenda was up to date with our nerve-wracked times.  Note that Ebola was discussed.  But this year there was just a single session -- down from 2013's three session last year -- that included the word 'aging' in its session title -- that one was sponsored by Pfizer. It was noted in keynotes that the population is aging -- and that has major implications for the mHealth world.  Maybe next year the summit will actively seek a few exhibitors that focus specifically on technology and ideas to help real seniors, the population aged 75+ -- especially now that CMS is going to boost pay for chronic care management in the home.  Why just think of the revenue -- the PERS industry alone has north of $1.5 billion in annual revenue, offers a customer base that could benefit from chronic care management in the home, and could also use an injection of remote health monitoring functionality.  But I digress. Here are five companies in various stages of starting up from the 2014 mHealth Summit. If a aging-related company from this year's exhibitor list is missing from this list -- please comment. Text is derived directly from the companies:

LGTMedical. "LGTmedical produces low-cost, mobile health solutions for global healthcare markets. The Kenek Core™ universal audio-based interface connects standard medical sensors to mobile devices, providing accurate and affordable vital signs monitoring – for everyone, everywhere. Applications and medical sensors using Kenek Core connectivity have been developed for SpO2, blood pressure, and temperature. The Kenek Edge™ pulse oximeter was recently launched into the US and Canadian markets." Learn more at http://lgtmedical.com/.

SwiftAlarm!. "SwiftAlarm!© helps the elderly survive emergencies by getting them help faster.  It offers a system and device that gives the elderly their freedom by constantly tracking their movements and health conditions remotely. Currently Personal Emergency Response (PERS) require expensive subscriptions to call centers. This system turns current models upside down. It requires no hardware setup, only the download of a software to a smartphone." Learn more at http://www.swiftalarm.com/.