The Smart Health Series With SiliconANGLE

This week’s Smart Health roundup features a medication activity tracker, a new platform for hardware and software designed for mobile retinal imaging and predictive analytics, and a budget-friendly health tracker for only $12.

Amiko activity tracker for inhaled medication

Amiko wants to revolutionize how people adhere to their inhaled medication with its inhaler wearable tracker. Amiko attaches to most dry powder inhalers and automatically collects data about medication usage after it syncs with the app. The tracker provides real-time feedback for medication adherence, ultimately looking to circumvent human errors in medication monitoring.

Amiko also features SENSENERGY, a proprietary algorithm used to track whether the inhaler is loading correctly and if the user has it in the right position before intake. If a user doesn’t have a smartphone, that’s okay, as Amiko also comes with a little hub that delivers all the features of the app. The hub alerts users with messages from their Amiko Circle for medication reminders, with other alerts for skipped doses.

Right now, Amiko is a project on Indiegogo Inc. looking to raise $50,000.

eyeMITRA

Ramesh Raskar’s Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab is developing eyeMITRA, a software and hardware platform that aims to revolutionize how people monitor their health in the future.

The team is developing a Google Glass-like device that can be worn without too many weird looks, sending images of the wearer’s eye retina to a cloud-based database. There algorithms will be used to scan retinal images and flag abnormalities. If you’re not into wearing glasses, the platform will also be designed to work with a smartphone’s camera.

“Your eyes are a window into your health,” Raskar said. Thickening and thinning of arteries can be indicators of diabetes, breaks in the blood flow can be flags for infections, for example. “It’s the only part of your body where you can see your blood without cutting yourself open.”

Life Tracker 1 – the $12 health tracker

For those who want to start taking care of themselves by learning more about their bodies, the answer could be as cheap as $12 a year. Pivotal Living, formally Pivotal Corporation, has unveiled its first wearable device called the Life Tracker 1, able to track calories burned, steps, distance, percentage of step goals, sleep, weight, active time, as well as function as a watch. What makes this offering unique is that the device itself is free. All one has to do is sign up for a Pivotal Living subscription, which comes with a free wearable fitness tracker and full access to its mobile app, available for iOS and Android devices.

When one year is up, users have the option to discontinue your subscription. The tracker will still be usable on its own, displaying real-time information on its screen. The downside is, without a subscription users can no longer access data on the mobile app.

“The complaints were about trackers being too expensive, too complicated, and not approachable,” Pivotal CEO and co-founder David Donovick said in a released statement. “So for us, the affordability was huge.”

photo credit: Retinafunk via photopin cc