Friday, November 30, 2012

5 of 15 startups building apps for healthcare

Help you Breathe!

“People don’t like to do breathing exercises, but when they do, they feel better,” says Leslie Saxon, head of the University of Southern California’s Center for Body Computing. 

With that in mind, she’s building a game that has asthmatics and heart patients blow into their smartphone mic to move a ball or fly a magic carpet across a landscape. 

Scores are then sent to doctors.

Read her blog at uscbodycomputing.org

And watch her TED Talk at blog.tedmed.com

In this 15-part series on the thrilling, disruptive potential of "mHealth," I highlight businesses using mobile technology in health care.

Leveraging the wonders of a device that's fast becoming ubiquitous – two in three people worldwide own a cell phone – a new generation of startups is building apps and add-ons that make your handheld work like high-end medical equipment.

Cheaper, sleeker, and a lot more versatile.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

4 of 15 startups building apps for healthcare

Count your calorie burn with precision!
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Body Media Armbands are unlike services that calculate calories burned solely from GPS or pedometer data.

These wearable sensors (and companion iOS and Android apps) take all into account: heart rate, perspiration, skin temperature, and heat dissipation, along with time spent lying down and sleeping. 

The accuracy rate is an unprecedented 95%.


In this 15-part series on the thrilling, disruptive potential of "mHealth," I highlight businesses using mobile technology in health care.

Leveraging the wonders of a device that's fast becoming ubiquitous – two in three people worldwide own a cell phone – a new generation of startups is building apps and add-ons that make your handheld work like high-end medical equipment.

Cheaper, sleeker, and a lot more versatile.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

3 of 15 startups building apps for healthcare


Heal your Heart!

AliveCor created its mobile electrocardiogram (ECG) recorder, which is basically an iPhone case embedded with electro sensors.

It lets anyone perform a routine heart checkup by pressing a smartphone to their chest.

This means patients could share weekly, or even daily, readings with doctors.


In this 15-part series on the thrilling, disruptive potential of "mHealth," I highlight businesses using mobile technology in health care.

Leveraging the wonders of a device that's fast becoming ubiquitous – two in three people worldwide own a cell phone – a new generation of startups is building apps and add-ons that make your handheld work like high-end medical equipment.

Cheaper, sleeker, and a lot more versatile.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

2 of 15 startups building apps for healthcare


Take your blood pressure!

Once users plug the Withings Blood-Pressure Monitor into an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, they can see their data displayed in graph form.

Then, you can send them to doctors, and more. 

Watch a demo video at withings.com

In this 15-part series on the thrilling, disruptive potential of "mHealth," I highlight businesses using mobile technology in health care.

Leveraging the wonders of a device that's fast becoming ubiquitous – two in three people worldwide own a cell phone – a new generation of startups is building apps and add-ons that make your handheld work like high-end medical equipment.

Cheaper, sleeker, and a lot more versatile.


Monday, November 26, 2012

1 of 15 startups building apps for healthcare

Examine your ears!

CellScope has developed a magnifying attachment turns any smartphone camera into a mini-microscope

This allows users to capture high resolution images of their outer and middle ears, and email them to doctors for assessment.   

Future versions could include software that recommends triage treatment.

Learn more at cellscope.com 

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In this 15-part series on the thrilling, disruptive potential of "mHealth," I highlight businesses using mobile technology in health care.

Leveraging the wonders of a device that's fast becoming ubiquitous – two in three people worldwide own a cell phone – a new generation of startups is building apps and add-ons that make your handheld work like high-end medical equipment.

Cheaper, sleeker, and a lot more versatile.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Creative inspiration in the kitchen

Really appreciate the creativity and craftsmanship behind our new kitchen counter and tiles.  

Thanks to our contractor, Verl, and the guys at Oregon Tile & Marble of Boise.








Wednesday, November 14, 2012

"600 creative minds strong, spread across continents, acting as one." - GYRO

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I love the copy is this ad. 











What A Time To Be Alive

The bright, new technologies of now are bringing humans together as never before.  In just one click, we can share our innermost thoughts with a million other minds.

We can swap pictures of kittens.  We can bring down governments.  We should feel like gods.  But somehow we don’t.

Because most what we feel is numb.

It seems we’ve switched on something that we can’t switch off.  The current of information is endless now; it knows where we work and it follows us home.  It bombards us with multichannel assaults on our time and attention, and the more it continues, the more desensitized we become.

So the big question is this:  In a world made numb by digital noise, what can any business or brand do to make itself relevant again?  Why should anyone care?

It is the question we reinvented our company to answer.

After three decades helping world-class businesses succeed, we have had the courage to change our culture.

Entirely.

The kind of ideas our clients need now can come from anywhere and take any form, so we’ve swept away the “creative apartheid.”

These times demand an agency with unconventional DNA, a collective team of influencers, curators, editors, thinkers, inventors and producers.

With all the energy, excitement and passion of a start-up – we have created a global ideas shop.

We are 600 creative minds strong, spread across continents, acting as one.  United by a single propose:  to produce ideas that ignite.

These unstoppable ideas, fired by emotion, are behind everything we want to achieve for our clients.  Emotion is the key to intimacy between businesses, brands and people.  It’s there in every choice humans make, whether they’re buying laptops or signing million-dollar contracts.

Ideas that ignite emotions are ideas that ignite business decisions.

And our right to exist as a company depends on our ability to find those expansive ideas – on every project we’re given and every single day we come to work.

We will never be afraid to do whatever it takes to make businesses and brands matter to people again.

WE ARE GYRO.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

8 triggers to help you Breakout of the ordinary


Although it's impossible to draw up an exhaustive list of every activity or setting that may produce a breakout, each of the triggers mentioned below has worked well for at least some individuals.

In their book The Breakout Principle: How to Activate the Natural Trigger That Maximizes Creativity, Athletic Performance, Productivity and Personal Well-Being, Benson and Proctor present these among many categories that have demonstrated the power to stimulate the biological changes commonly associated with breakouts and peak creative experiences.

As you review these options, ask yourself: Is it possible that this approach, or something like this approach, would work for me?

  While at first these activities may seem totally different, they all have one major factor in common: the power to sever prior mental patterns -- and that's what the Breakout trigger is all about.

Monday, November 12, 2012

4 pillars of successful drug development from Ross Weaver


Earlier this year, the Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed my business friend Ross Weaver about some challenges in clinical trials. 



Here’s what Ross had to say in “A Neglected Part Drug Development Gets New Attention”:
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At Goldman-Sachs' health care conference, Merck CEO Ken Frazier said that his company would stock a higher proportion of its late-stage pipeline with in-licensed and purchased compounds.


A business professor from the University of Michigan was moved by Frazier's remarks to comment, "Looking for late-stage deals is not a sign of confidence in the internal late-stage pipeline...Nothing is more expensive than a late-stage deal."

Frazier's comment and the reactions to it provide a capsule view of pharma's current condition. More than patent expirations, stingy, third-party payers or illegal and unethical promotions, the drug industry's current down cycle results from its reduced productivity at developing new drugs.

Signs are emerging, however, that the industry's leaders are at least starting to pay attention to this shortcoming. Analyst Tim Anderson at Sanford Bernstein finds it encouraging that pipelines may "improve as a result of the conscious effort by drug company management teams to try and fix” the complex  problems affecting drug development.

Ross Weaver makes the point that successful drug development rests on four pillars.
  1. assessing the prospects that a particular compound will demonstrate sufficient efficacy and safety for inclusion in the standard of care.
  2. new compounds must meet regulatory criteria for approval.
  3. pharmas must demonstrate that their compounds provide a sufficient advantage over alternatives to permit the market access needed for commercial success. Specialists that work in this area, for example, try to forecast a compound's potential sales.
  4. drug companies must successfully manage the "operational feasibility" of clinical trials to permit the adequate, timely enrollment of patients into clinical trials.

Weaver claims that, historically, pharmas have rigorously assessed and coordinated the first three elements while the challenges of recruiting patients have been shorted at the planning table. Clinical operations groups at pharma companies do assess the factors affecting recruitment and they typically model the approaches used by previously approved compounds in the pertinent classes. 

Nevertheless, Weaver claims that the heavy lifting of trial planning involves the first three pillars. Only after progress of a study has been delayed well beyond projections, typically as a result of slow recruitment, does attention turn obsessively to that factor. Too often, by then the stalled trials cause financial pressures that compromise one or more of the other three factors as companies scramble to enroll patients.

To prevent such "fire drill trial amendments," Weaver suggests a more rigorous effort at assessing feasibility and recruitment early in the planning process, taking into account the unique characteristics of the trial at hand. This involves such tasks as working collaboratively with nurse coordinators at appropriately selected trial sites to discern how patient candidates and referring physicians will react to a particular compound, its projected profile and overall trial design.

Factors that can hinder recruitment include things such as the number of times a patient must visit the clinic during the several weeks or months of a trial. Other influences can include the frequency of drawing blood samples from patients, the nature and severity of side effects, and the extent to which patients feel the test drug relieves their condition. The list of things that can affect recruitment remains quite long and can include considerations that are not easily predictable in advance.

Companies must then use this assessment of operational feasibility to modify the risk assessment, regulatory relations and commercial projections for each mid-to-late stage compound.

"The operational assessment," according to Weaver, "should receive the same strategic emphasis as the other three factors."

By his calculation, the money required to do this appears quite modest, compared to the costs for planning and carrying out the other functions. As a typical example, he claims it would mean, "spending $250,000 to inform an investment of $50 million."

Industries with long development times show a wide range of efficiencies at developing new products. Some of them, such as aerospace, have been notorious for getting away with cost overruns because they maintain captive customer markets, consisting of a few nations or airlines. By contrast pharma finds itself in a period where the incremental value of its new products fails to compel purchasing. Until such time as the science can restore pharma's growth prospects by creating new products that people want to buy, the industry must do a better job of managing the timing and costs of developing its drugs.

The fact that at least a few suppliers are proposing tactics for achieving this efficiency represents an encouraging sign.


(Ross Weaver is now partner of Clinical Trial Recovery Specialists, and president of DDI)

Saturday, November 10, 2012

6 ideas to more accurately reflect today's modern family


“Today's modern family is more than a hit TV show,” writes Rob Rosenberg is president of  Springboard Brand and Creative Strategy.  “It's a new composition of your customer groups, and you have an opportunity to make a greater impact with your marketing and creative strategies.”

In his latest blog post, Rob offers 6 ideas to more accurately reflect customers in your messaging – to reach out in more genuine and authentic ways.
  1. Re-examine your marketplace
  2. Align your customer service strategies
  3. Evaluate research methodologies
  4. Push your service-line strategies 
  5. Reflect the marketplace in your creative
  6. Continue to explore new media channels and networks 


Wednesday, November 07, 2012

“Designing in Dialogue” - Architectural exhibit

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When I visited Rio de Janiero last summer, I went to an exhibition by architectural firm gmp.von Gerkan, Marg and Partners at the MAC museum.

I learned that over the past 45 years, Meinhard von Gerkan, Volkwin Marg and their partners have designed and constructed buildings in virtually all the major cities of Germany, numerous other European countries, in Asia, Africa, and South America. 

The firm has become known worldwide for its enduring, logical architecture that is based on a “dialogue” with its location. 

The range of commissions undertaken by gmp include:
  • museums
  • opera houses
  • stadiums
  • government buildings
  • airports
  • railway stations
  • fairgrounds
  • office buildings
  • university campuses
  • homes
  • and even whole cities.
Take a look at some of their amazing work at www.gmp-architekten.de




Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Monday, November 05, 2012

5 kinds of case studies to understand and benchmark current clinical practice with N-of-8


With the array of information available now through journals, seminars, societies, textbooks, and online searches, to name just a few sources, it is understandably difficult to determine on your own what constitutes relevant current practice and what does not.

The first step in approaching this task may be to clarify the differences among basic research methodologies and to examine how different methodologies are designed to answer different types of practice questions.

Qualitative research is not typically designed or intended to yield causal conclusions. It is generally intended to describe or explain behavior and thus should not be used to make conclusions about motivation or influence.

That said, qualitative research contributes a great deal of essential information.

With the N-of-8 techniques I developed, you can explore attitudes, opinions, beliefs, perceptions, interactions, practice structure, and behaviors in various settings.

A case may be based on:
  1. an individual customer, who has an established routine
  2. a practicing group of physicians or researchers, who have created common protocols
  3. a hospital, that uses a documented treatment algorithm or formulary
  4. a professional society, which has published practice guidelines
  5. an event, that exemplifies the experiences of the group
For example, I worked with a client with a treatment for a rare medical condition and collaborated with several research partners to report an analysis of eight cases of practices. Specifically, we collected observations of in-office activities, interviews with generalists and specialists, patient notes, videotapes of interactions, and other materials. The purpose of this study was to thoroughly examine the actual behaviors in these cases.

We gained valuable insight into the nature of diagnosis, patient communication, and most important, ideas for product packaging and training before the brand launch.

The major purpose of N-of-8 research is to understand current practice, product usage, and customer behavior.

Friday, November 02, 2012

10 years from now, how will you measure your life's investment?

"It's actually really important that you succeed at what you're succeeding at, but that isn't going to be the measure of your life."

Too often, we measure success in life against the progress we make in our careers. But how can we ensure we're not straying from our values as humans along the way? Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School professor and world-renowned innovation guru, examines the daily decisions that define our lives and encourages all of us to think about what is truly important.


“Typically, the way you calculate profitability, investments that pay off tomorrow go to the bottom line and are much more tangible than investments that pay off 10 years from now,” he says, before noting that this pursuit of short-term achievement distorts the lives of people as well as companies.

Read more in Christensen's latest book, and on the website www.measureyourlife.com