Technology is a wonderful thing, and even more so when it is providing a very useful service which can impact someone’s life in a positive way.

Combining technology, health and personal devices is a trend which seems to be taking off, along with the explosion for the love of smartphone applications (namely the iPhone).

(If you are interested in mobile culture, take a look at my recent post here).

So, what is out there right now?

Fitbit is something which looks squarely aimed at the tech / health conscious consumer, and my first impressions are that is well designed, well thought out, but not available yet.

It looks like that they are aiming for launch at the end of July, and they have a good blog to sign up to here.

It is not only the actual device which is important, but critically the interface where you will see the information. fitbit have done a really good job here, making it clear, accessible and down right good-looking!

What does it actually do though?

The Fitbit Tracker contains a motion sensor like the ones found in the Nintendo Wii. The Tracker senses your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities. The Tracker measures the intensity and duration of your physical activities, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, how long it took you to fall asleep, the number of times you woke up throughout the night and how long you were actually asleep vs just lying in bed.

fibit is of course, not the only device out there. Zume Life is a company looking at something quite similar.

Zume Life supports you as you follow through with you individual health regimen and wellness program. The Zume Life personal health management system enables you that have on-going health activities (such as for chronic disease, weight loss, or treatment recovery) to draw inspiration and support from those in your personal support network, and helps you better track and adhere to your programs and regimens.

So, they are looking at health generally and their software and iPhone application could actually be used for any number of different disease areas, focussing on what they call the “4 R’s” :

It helps you:
- REMEMBER to do various health-related activities
- RECORD these activities

It helps you and your caregivers:
- REVIEW on-going health patterns and the interrelationships among different activities
- RESPOND quickly to changes in health

Speaking of iPhone apps, there 25 pages of apps which are classified as medical, and in the recent Apple event talking about their iPhone software 3.0, Johnson and Johnson had a slot speaking about their app for managing diabetes. This had some very impressive functionality, even utilising email to send reports, alerts or status updates to people.

So, what do we think?

• The complexity, usefulness and number of apps for health and fitness is going to increase and soon
• They are going to be start to be seen as essential, not just a gimmick or gadget
• They are going to be linked to the local doctor’s surgery or the hospital, enabling real time monitoring and recording
• They need to be developed with the pharma and healthcare companies from an early stage to provide maximum functionality and fit
• They will get smaller and smaller, and could easily be inserted under the skin for example in the future
• As smartphones become more powerful and the mobile data networks increase in speed, the usefulness of the apps will also increase

If have an idea or want to talk about developing an app, or perhaps you work for a pharma company and need guidance, and a route to market for such an application, then please do give us a ring. We are confident we can help (and also this kind of thing gets us very excited!).

UPDATE - there is an excellent article here about mobile applications for health (Advertising Age).