In general, I really like the idea of using personal mobile computing devices in treating/preventing chronic conditions. As devices and sensors get smarter and cheaper, it’s logical that they start playing role in helping individuals deal with chronic, lifestyle affecting conditions like migraines, sleep disorders, allergies, dysmenorrhea, depression etc.

Proactive Sleep provides a ’smart alarm clock’ for iPhone/iPod Touch. Some features: customize what music to fall asleep to, and to wake up with, a dynamic ‘vigilance game’ that you need to complete to turn the alarm off, and a sleep diary to note your observations and sleeping habits. Nothing earth-shattering there. The features may be simple, and its not my intention to critique Proactive Sleep per se. What I want to emphasize is that applications like these are a step in the right direction overall.

For a number of chronic disorders with no established cause (like migraines, insomnia), keeping an accurate log (diary) can be extremely useful for prevention and treatment. Integrating such ‘digital diary’ into daily lifestyle can be much more convenient and smart way of keeping track of such conditions. Proactive Sleep is a bit too manual, in my opinion (e.g. you need to document everything in your sleep diary yourself). What would be awesome is to combine it with a smart sensor (like the FitBit) to automatically record your sleep habits. That way its even more Health 2.0.

Good ideas are always simple. I’m really optimistic about the emerging simple tools that let consumers manage, monitor or understand their health issues better. ZeaLOG is a simple tracker that lets you measure anything, and report off it. The service seems pretty new and driven by a team of one, so there are some rough edges here and there. Most of the ZeaLOGs started are around profound topics like ‘Number of Simpsons Episodes Watched’ or ‘TV Dinners Eaten’, but there are some borderline-serious ones too (exercise, diet related).

It’s not focused on healthcare issues, but I see potential for something like this in chronic conditions that affect an individual’s lifestyle. A good example is migraines. Those who have these terrible headaches would benefit from knowing exactly how many did they have this month vs. past 6 months and what were they doing when it started. So If one could log the onset/end of a migraine attack and the preceding activity conveniently, it’d be easy to spot a pattern (e.g. higher chance of migraine after cold shower).

Why not keep a simple diary bedside? or spreadsheet? Yeah, you can. But how many people do? And how many diaries can remind you to enter latest information in them and chart/graph your progress? It’d be a good idea to add some social networking features to ZeaLOG- finding comparative stats or just connecting with others in the same state as you are powerful motivators for using such tools (for example- Qwitter). ZeaLOG has twitter integration, but it’d be neat to have a mobile app too, especially one that syncs up intelligently with online data.

There is a paid service idea in this concept somewhere. I’m sure we’ll see one soon in healthcare.

LifeShirt is a wearable ‘smart fabric‘ that can be used to remotely monitor multiple vital signs. It is made by VivoMetrics, a Ventura, CA based startup founded in 1999. From what I can gather, LifeShirt captures data around heart rate, respiration, posture, activity level, temperature, limb II ECG and can connect to optional peripheral devices for EEG, skin temperature, blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure and galvanic skin response.

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) is a subset of telemedicine that includes devices and software that enable healthcare providers and educators to diagnose, monitor and follow up patients remotely. There is a lot of potential in smart fabrics to enable RPM, especially for chronic diseases like Asthma, CHF, Hypertension, etc. I’m personally very excited to see companies enter this space and solutions becoming more and more mainstream.

Currently VivoMetrics is focusing on clinical research and sleep apnea study market. Their next generation product is supposed to be lighter, more comfortable and with the ability to transmit data wirelessly. Also in the works is a partnership with OBS Medical to incorporate their Visensia® software as a predictive tool.