The recent 5+ months has been a roller coaster. From doing a crazy amount of company research to obtaining industry knowledge and hanging out with the movers of this field. With the primary objective of better understanding the mobile health / digital health ecosystem. My passion for knowledge and care for others drove me to do this, not the money (like there was any to start with anyways).

While I had other opportunities to enter successful enterprises, I held steadfast to the healthcare world. Recently there has been a new opportunity for me to help by providing information and work on the front lines of helping people obtain new medicines.

I have taken up a business development position that helps license pharmaceutical drugs into an Asian market. Playing as side of the Asian company. This position will be challenging but leaving this website is even harder.

I am now seeking for people who are passionate about the digital health system that are willing to write blogs and update the company list as necessary. If you are interested, please email me.

I would like to thank the support from all those individuals that have came to this blog and those other bloggers to continue to provide innovative news sources. Such as MedCity, Mobihealthnews, Xconomy and all those that follow and believe in the digital health industry.

A few notable articles:

Healthcare Delivers Technical Knockout at CES – Forbes by Dan Murno

Things Entrepreneurs Should Avoid When Raising Capital – Techcrunch by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan

Mobile health is dead. Call it digital health every time – MedCity News by Chris Seper

Enabling Collaborative Healthcare Delivery – Whitepaper by MobileHealthcareToday

NSF holds Smart Health and Wellbeing Webinar (Notes, Powerpoint and commentary) Erwin Gianchandani of Computing Community Consortium Blog

Mobile software firm Novarus shifts focus to digital health apps Frank Vinluan of MedCity  News

How to sell mobile health devices even when hospitals fear theft Stephanie Baum of MedCity News

What will it take for physicians to adopt mHealth? David Lee Scher of DLS Healthcare Consulting via mHIMSS

An Interview with Blueprint Health Matthew Holt of Health2.oNews

How to Turn a Mobile Health Application into a Real Business Skip Fleshman of Xconomy (a MUST read)

5 percent of patients account for nearly half of U.S. healthcare spending Rene Letourneau of HealthcareFinanceNews

In the healthcare blogosphere, there are always very well written blogs, not all exactly coverable by just myself. So here is a short list on what has been going on:

Wild wild west health apps can FDA restore order without stifling innovation (MassDevice)

Masimo’s prick free hemoglobin spot checker (MedGadget)

Telehealth and mHealth some pros and cons (eHealthCentral)

iHealth Lab to offer iPad Glucose meter (mobihealthnews)

Life Technologies to offer $1000 DNA sequencing (WSJ)

Spent the last week updating with more companies. Its amazing how many companies have similar business models. But now I need your help in obtaining more! Contact me at: contact (at) unfoldhealth (dot) com.

Link is here but you can also click on the bar above.

Simliar trends still progress here.

1. Bay Area/Silicon Valley in California is still the most with 85 health companies.

2. Between Washington DC to Boston there are around 79 health companies, with 37 and 28 in NY and Boston area respectively. Given the huge area though, its unfair to compare with silicon valley.

3. Chicago area on the other hand has a solid 24.

Halle Tecco at RockHealth made a damn good move in making the incubator in the Bay Area rather than Boston. Or you can say thanks to Halle there are even more mHealth companies in the Bay Area!

Lipitor can now be made by generic companies because the patent has expired. Lipitor owned by Pfizer made ~10 billion USD in the last year. That is 83 times over the health and fitness app market in 2010. (120 million in 2010, 400 mil in 2016 million according to ABI Research). How can one drug make that much money? Very easily with one word. Patents.

I am a strong believer in patents in the hardware market, though not so much in the software. The unique situation with software patents lies with Google, which will be discussed later.

With medical related hardware technologies, patents is key. Why?

1. Creates a monopoly (if patents are done correctly)

2. Protects the company from patent trolls

3. Can provide a source of revenue (licencing)

4. Gives intangible assets (which can increase valuation)

5. Makes the company more attractive for exits (M&A)

6. Sets barriers to entry. (Which is a big big deal)

7. Makes the company more attractive to investors (VC,PE or IPO)

Patents do create complexities and questions that needs to be answered by a patent lawyer. Do you want to go international or local? Which patent lawyer is really good? How much money do you  need? Etc..etc..

There are also a lot of valid arguments against filing patents. Waste of manpower of a 5 person company. No revenues. Others.

I may not be an expert here, but hopefully this gets you off on the right foot. A good question to ask a patent lawyer is how they are keeping up with how Lipitor are fighting off generics, that would be an interesting discussion.

If anyone knows of any good patent lawyers, feel free to comment below. Or email me.