inTooch Teamed Up With MobileLoco: Users Can Exchange Data On The Fly

inTooch, a mobile application that supports both Android and iPhone, easily and seamlessly allows you to instantly exchange contact and social network information on the fly.

inTooch teamed up with San Francisco-based Mobile-Loco this past week, an event that explores the convergence of brands, advertising and mobile.   

Attendees were encouraged to download the free mobile app, so they could quickly exchange all their contact information or a portion of it with new people they met at the event, including their social media network data. 

Whenever you meet someone you want to stay in touch with, you simply call the person, the app detects that you have called them for the first time and prompts you automatically to exchange your contact information, giving you the option to exchange your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn details as well.

Since geo-tagging is built in, the inTooch app tracks where connection requests are made and will link all connection requests to the location, in this case the Mobile-Loco event in San Francisco, CA. When users browse through their connections, they can see all the connections they made at Mobile-Loco.  After the event, inTooch will also send an email to each user who sent a connection request during Mobile-Loco with the list of all the contacts they met at the event, resulting in a more efficient way to follow up and turn contacts into relationships that matter. 

A useful augmented reality feature, which is popular for personal encounters, is a report that informs you of all the things you have in common with that person (friends, places you visited, music, movies you like, social network info, check-ins, interests you share).

Unlike most apps, inTooch works regardless of whether the person you just met has it on his or her cell phone, making it the most natural, straight forward and easy way to share your personal or business details.  inTooch is available for download at http://www.intooch.com and is free for users. Currently, inTooch works with both the Android and the iPhone, with support for other platforms and mobile devices coming later this year.

Photo above is of inTooch's CEO Julien Salanon on the MobileLoco stage. 

Disclosure: I provide some consulting to inTooch.

Don't Die a Slow Death in a Mountain of Business Cards: Try inTooch!

I no longer get pumped up about cool new social apps or drink the Silicon Valley coolaid - there's just too much of it.

When I learn about new products or services, these are my two go to questions: would I use this today and does this solve a real problem that I've had for awhile?

When inTooch co-founder and CEO Julien Salanon gave me his pitch and suggested we work together, I was at first skeptical about their promise: to eliminate the business card problem.

While it's too early to tell since there are so many variables in this business not to mention human behavior, as a fellow entrepreneur, I couldn't help but be intrigued by his idea. And besides, Julien has one of those personalities that is impossible not to like. 

He shared a story with me as we sipped tea at one of my favorite haunts in San Francisco's SOMA. Nearly ten years ago, he was at an important conference and forgot his business cards and a result, important connections were lost.

Over the last decade, he said that he tried several apps to solve this business-card issue, but none of them worked. They still don't. Don't even get me started with BUMP btw, an app that peer pressure forced me to download yet it only worked one out of ten times I tried it. And, frankly, the whole concept of crashing two phones together doesn't quite gel with me. 

Julien said, "whenever I didn't have a business card or they didn't, I ended up calling the other person to leave my mobile number. And, that’s when I got the idea to enhance those natural connections with inTooch.”

While I may not call every person I meet at a conference, when I do meet someone I want to stay in touch with and we don't have a pen or card, what happens? They call me so the number is saved in my phone. What I don't have in that scenario of course is their name or email automatically, but it's a process that works in a pinch.

inTooch takes it a step further allowing you to email or call them on the fly which automatically sends a link: this link is the conduit which allows that exchange of information to happen. The beautiful part about the app and why it stands a strong chance of taking off, is that both parties don't need to have the app to work.

Intrigued that perhaps I'd soon have a client with a product I'd ACTUALLY USE, I decided to be the evil dragonness to avoid any surprises later on, so I started drilling him with questions. 

What about categorization I asked? Not in the first version he said, but it's coming. What about social networks? Built in he said. What about privacy and personalization? Built in he said. Hmm, I wanted categories of course given that I have nearly 100,000 contacts in my database, but also realize that I'm not your average Nelly when it comes to contact management.

As my friend Steve said, "you're not normal, you're in the business of needing to mate with the world. In fact, you love to mate with the world." I had to laugh. He's right. I love meeting people and no one seems to come home from an event with more business cards than I do.

AND, he said, the ability to add contacts to categories is coming. They already have the ability to separate personal and business contacts.

I'm a realist. Anyone who works with early start-ups needs to be a realist. Rome wasn't build in a day and most apps when they first go to market don't have every single detail or feature you want built in in their first version. As long as the team has it on the roadmap or thinking about it, it's good enough to give it a shot. If we didn't trust that process, real innovation wouldn't happen and we wouldn't be where we are today.

Unlike so many social apps that are Web 2.0 features rather than solutions to problems, I thought to myself, "inTooch would actually take care of a huge pain point in my life."

And so, we embarked on a journey in early September. Forward wind the clock. Julien took People's Choice Award at GigaOm's Mobilize in mid-September when he pitched a panel of VCs on stage.

Then, he officially launched inTooch on the DEMO Stage on October 3 with Dave Mathews in an amusing skit that included the duo tossing 2,000 business cards into the DEMO audience as they shouted FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM.

At one point, I thought Julien might start dancing when the music came on. OR, maybe it was one of those Halleluja moments.

Consider this: did you realize that of all the people you meet at a conference or even in a personal situation, you won't stay in touch with 85% of them? Without sounding too trite - inTooch to the rescue.

Trust me, I want to be rescued and I think most of us do. I can't keep up with the volume of contacts and there are always people to want to follow up with and just don't have the time. There are also people's contact information I'm trying to locate months later and realized I didn't have time to enter their data.

There are 4 cool features I personally love about the app:

1. The Mobile Geo-Location Piece: since I travel a lot, I often think about people (and their faces) based on 'where' I met them. Oh yeah, that was John who I met at this festival in Louisville Kentucky, or that was Jeannie something and we hung out at CES in Las Vegas. Using geo-tagging, inTooch lets you search for people by location and their photo appears as well to jog your memory. Sweet!

2. Seamless/Fast: additionally, if I don't want to call the person or they don't want me to, I can shoot them an email and the inTooch connector still works. The other cool thing is that both parties don't need the app for the exchange to happen. Obviously the process is even faster if both people DO have the app, so I'd encourage everyone to download the app. Let the seamless exchange of data begin! 

3. Social Network Exchange. So many people I meet under the age of 30 either don't have a business card (even in a business setting), give me their Twitter handle or say connect with me on Facebook. (as if I'm going to remember their name or handle the next day or a week later when I'm back home).

I'm always amazed that they think I'll take the time to jot down their data with a visual queue of our conversation. It's too much work. What's great about inTooch is that you can opt to include the exchange of your social network information as well. It currently supports LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

I've known Chris Taylor from Mashable for years and for some odd reason, didn't know he was @FutureBoy on Twitter. Ever try to Google a "common name's" Twitter handle and not get so frustrated by the fifth click that you finally give up? Don't get me started on the poor search functionality within Twitter itself although I know they're improving it all the time.

4. Augmented Reality: for personal encounters, inTooch brings augmented reality to your connections, alerting you to all the things you have in common with another person (friends, places you visited, music, movies you like, social network info, check-ins, interests you share) so you can instantly engage in mutually interesting conversations.

Bottom line, it's been a fun ride so far and we're only a month into it. Free to use, the app is available now for iPhone (except iOS6) and alive and ticking for the Android as well.

Support for iOS6, other platforms and mobile devices are also coming later this year.

So, give it a try. Don't die a slow death in a mountain of business cards like poor Matt Marshall here! Everyone has their limits.

Below is a video shot by Jean Baptiste Su of their demo presentation.

See my earlier write-up on inTooch on the day of launch. And, refer to my two write-ups on Demo, 8 cool commerce apps and my DEMO photo summary.

Photo Credits: photo at GigaOm taken by Carla Schlemminger and all other photos by Renee Blodgett.

With InTooch, Instantly Turn New Connections Into Relationships That Matter

For those of you who go to a lot of conferences and events like I do, collecting business cards, exchanging data and keeping in touch with people after the fact is a daunting task.

Sure, there are apps who have promised to faciliate the exchange of information in the past, but most require both people to have the app installed or the need to work in some unnatural and awkward way.

And, then there's card scanners. I've invested in three over the years and two of the three ended up in a yard sale not so long ago. 

The other one I donated to Goodwill. 

Bottom line, they're not accurate so you're stuck stuck fixing all the mistakes or retyping the contact info into your database for the second and third time.

I recently started working with a French-founded start-up called InTooch who is now based in Silicon Valley. 

InTooch is a mobile application that allows you to instantly turn people you meet into personal and business relationships that matter.

Selected to present their technological innovation with over 75 other companies on the DEMO Fall stage this week, their demo will be included in the social media category.

Did you realize that of all the people you meet at a conference or even in a personal situation, you won't stay in touch with 85% of them? InTooch aims to not just decrease that number but improve those relationships using their app.

The great thing about the product is that it's easy, it's fast and it's free. Instantly, the moment you meet, the InTooch social connector exchanges contact information and connects you on your preferred social networks on the fly.

While many apps have tried to solve the contact update and data overload problem, most require both people to have the app installed for it to work, or they involve connecting in an awkward way.

In doing research about how people around the world stay connected, they discovered that the majority call each other to exchange numbers in real time more than they connect on social networks and exchange a business cards. InTooch takes it a step further by allowing people to share more than just numbers in real time, including your social data.

 How it Works:

Whenever you meet someone you want to stay in touch with, simply call their cell. The app detects that you have called someone for the first time and prompts you automatically to exchange your business or personal contact information.  

 

Works on Any Receiving Device: you can send and receive new contact information regardless of what phone the other person has. If the other person doesn’t have InTooch, it simply sends a link and the rest is done seamlessly through their social connector technology.

 Social Network Integration: In just one call, you can connect through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. There’s no need to search for a contact in each social network nor to send invitations – connections are simply established on the fly.

No Need for Both Parties to Have the App: unlike so many solutions which require both parties to have the app installed to work, InTooch works regardless of whether the person you just met has it on their phone, making it the most natural, straight forward and easy way to share your personal or business details.  Obviously if the other person has the app, exchanging data is even faster.

 New Connection Highlights and Personal Match Score: For personal encounters, InTooch brings augmented reality to your connections, alerting you to all the things you have in common with another person (friends, places you visited, music, movies you like, social network info, check-ins, interests you share) so you can instantly engage in mutually interesting conversations.

It also provides a matching score based on an algorithm which calculates the probability of how well you should get along with that person.

Geo-Tagging of New Connections: since it’s much easier to remember where and when you met someone than his/her name, InTooch automatically tags the location of the initial connection, so you also can search for people by when and where you met them.

Privacy (Control What Data Your Share): InTooch respects your privacy, allowing you to customize what information you want to share and with whom.

InTooch is available for download at http://www.intooch.com and is free for users. Currently, InTooch works with both the Android and the iPhone (except for iOS6), with support for iOS6, other platforms and mobile devices coming later this year.

 

Entrepreneurs: Look Outside Silicon Valley for Innovation, Talent & Money

While Silicon Valley may be the "hub" for technology start-ups and where the world thinks the top creativity and talent reside, there is plenty of innovation coming out of other parts of the world.

In the states, Denver, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Portland and Seattle are all making strides.

Just this week, I was informed of a few start-ups out of Montana which just closed small rounds.

Outside the states, many entreprenuers and VCs alike know about the flood of activity coming out of Israel, the UK and mobile apps from developers in Eastern Europe, Asia and South Africa (Memeburn is a growing social media and start-up blog for the developing world and a hot new Cape Town-based start-up conference is unveiling in the fourth quarter).  

Paris-based LeWeb is one of the hottest start-up and technology conferences around and given its growth and diversity, it's not just focused on Europe anymore. In the last six months alone, I've met 6 French entrepreneurs who are moving from Paris to the Bay Area to increase their likelihood of getting funded and hiring the "right" names. Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Singapore too are all sprouting up new initiatives and innovations.

I talked to the Singapore folks at SXSW who fed me fabulous chicken wings at their booth. They have a presence in Silicon Valley and are hoping to grow it in the coming months and years, as is Ireland with Enterprise Ireland, who is responsible for the funding, development and international growth of start-up companies in Ireland.

The popularity of the Dublin Web Summit and the F.ounders conference are both strong indicators that the number of entrepreneurs and smart ideas coming out of Dublin and other pockets of the country is on the rise.

Ireland also had a strong presence at SXSW with 30 companies on-site under the Enterprise Ireland umbrella. Part of their pitch to the social media and technology world was not just of their own talent, but to encourage others to bring their businesses to Ireland. 

Ireland has a E10 million fund for international start-ups. While it may not be brand new, many may not be aware of it. Why Ireland, besides the natural reasons of it being a gorgeous country with landscape to die for and a country loaded with smart, witty storytellers? 

What many may not realize is that Ireland has the most business friendly tax regime of any country in Europe or the Americas, which is pretty attractive when your budgets are small and you're trying to raise early capital.

It is obviously English-speaking as well, which makes it easy for Canadians and Americans to migrate east and Ireland's geographic position and EU membership provides easy access to money flow on the continent. The World Bank's 'Doing Business' report rates Ireland as the easiest EU location to start a business. And, the Irish Government has an assertive pro-business economic policy, offering a 12.5% corporate tax rate and 25% R&D tax credit.  

For those soley focused in Silicon Valley, perhaps it's time to think a little more global. With more expansive thinking will come additional resources, capital and creativity not to mention interesting culture, social benefits and economic development outside of what northern California has to offer.

Social Media Cop in Toronto Fights Graffiti by Embracing It & Its Creators

Toronto cop Scott Mills has made huge strides in not just cutting down violence but helping youth in the greater Toronto area. He wears several hats, one of which is Graffiti BMX Cop on Twitter where he has nearly 2,800 followers including some of the graffiti artists he has helped.

Below, the Webdoc team sits with him before his 140Conf presentation at the 92nd Y in New York City to mix and mash all of his stories into one using their platform.

Scott takes a positive approach to graffiti in Toronto and works with kids. He is also a social media advisor to IT Committee and over @CSIWorld. Here are some webdocs that were created to tell his story, which includes a series of photos, text and video. Listen to the video below of an interview we did with him on-site at The 140 Conference New York.

Here's the Webdoc on Scott's story, which includes links, audio, video, photos and more.

Below is a Webdoc one of the graffiti artists Kedre Browne aka Bubzart created.

Disclosure: I provide some consulting to Webdoc.

Jamiroquai Digital Download SMILE Now Distributed Via Webdoc & Soundcloud

 Jamiroquai's digital download SMILE is now being distributed via Webdoc and Soundcloud. Neil Cartwright, Head of Digital at Media Junction, says, "Webdoc makes it dead simple to distribute "Smile". Since we could embed Soundcloud it's very straightforward to create a player that can be posted on Jamiroquai.com and Facebook, and subsequently shared by fans with their friends".

The cover artwork, which accompanies the single, was user-generated by Jamiroquai fans, who were asked to submit their ideas to a Flickr Group. The winner was selected by Jay Kay and used as the key visual to promote the single.

Webdoc is a ground-breaking way to mix any kind of media directly in your browser to create interactive posts on the fly in a few button clicks. Without having any web design experience or knowledge of coding, Webdoc's free tool allows you to mix different kinds of web content through a simple intuitive interface.

Take a look at Jamiroquai's webdocs here and below is the Webdoc where you can download SMILE.

Disclosure: I provide some consulting to Webdoc.

New York's 140 Conference: Photos, Webdocs, Interviews & More - #140Conf

Jeff Pulver’s 140 Conferences are growing. He has held these conferences in all the popular American spots such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco but he’s also had them in the Midwest, is working on one in Canada and has gathered people in London, Israel and other interesting pockets of the world.

Where there’s passion, an interest in a conversation about social media and people doing remarkable things, Jeff will find them.

One of the things he is exceptionally good at, is curating an incredible mix of people who have a lot to say and operate from the heart, but may not necessarily have anything else in common.

Where else can you go to a technology or social media event or any event for that matter and hear an ex-convict, a Graffiti artist, Craig Newmark, a cop, a school teacher, a dating coach, a major Fortune 500 brand strategist, AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong, The Today Show’s Ann Curry and Sesame Street’s chief social media guru all on the same stage within the same day?

Tear Down Those Walls:

On the first day, betaworks CEO John Borthwick (@Borthwick) talked about fragmentation, which he says is not just happening across the web but also at the network level as well. “This is the area that is concerning me most,” he said. “Facebook feels like the old early days of AOL – they’re a citizen of the Internet and yet they own and control too much. They need to integrate more with the web.”

He thinks we need to see companies and creators embrace the Internet much more than what we’re seeing today.  “The network is important,” he says and ends his talk with a few words for Mr. Zuckerberg: “Tear down that wall.”

Curation:

Curation continues to be a strong topic of discussion and its relevance and need is only growing more critical as the amount of data coming our way continues to explode.

Curation is so important because we’re trying to combine and recombine things to make sense of things. We need to be able to move and transition data seamlessly across devices. Refer to Steve Rosenbaum's talk on the need for clarity above and beyond more information and data. Human curators are a big part of the upcoming revolution. Video clip here.

Do You Have a Revolution?

“What’s your revolution?” Ja-Nae Duane aka The Sun Queen (on Twitter), asked the audience and added, “why aren’t we highlighting the social good more than we do?”

She shared a handful of amazing stories which have come out of Detroit and Dallas among other places. As the founder of Wild Women Entrepreneurs, she is passionate about accelerating women’s growth and personal revolutions.

Listen to this video on why she started her “movement.” And check out a webdoc created on her raison d'etre during the 140 Conference here.

Jeff Jarvis' talk: Tweeties have attacked the sanctity of the article. See webdoc here.

Below is a smattering of photos I shot during the speaker talks, the networking breaks and the after parties:

Dan Gillmor on life and ethics in "new media..." Refer to a webdoc that includes links, tweets and information about his book.

Foursquare's Dennis Crowley

The Webdoc team rocks it in the demo room. Check out their webdocs of the conference here.

AOL's Tim Armstrong talks about community and the importance of connection, social media input and regional/local content (Hatch.com).

Jeffrey Hayzlett in his normal charismatic self.

Sesame Street's Dan Lewis on how and why Sesame Street "tweets":

NPR's Andy Carvin

Craig Newmark talked about leaving your mark online by contributing and giving.

The Today Show's Ann Curry gets "very inspirational" during her 10 minute turned 20 minute talk. Love htat sixties style flower-child dress: she just makes it work.

Mashable's Adam Ostrow interviews Foursquare's Dennis Crowley

There's a singalong in honor of Jeff Pulver at the end of day two at the funky venue 92nd Y on the upper East Side.

New York Times Jennifer Preston interviews NPR's Carvin

Webdoc's Vincent Borel and Stelio Tzonis with Magnify's Steve Rosenbaum and his new book: Curation Nation

Paintings created on-site, proceeds of which go to breast cancer -- announced by Jeffrey Hayzlett on-site. For more information, check out Gaby (aka @Gaby407) and be sure not to miss Toronto cop Scott Mill's story (aka @GraffitiBMXCop). See webdoc for more information which includes links, videos, photos and more. His story includes work with graffiti artists Kedre Browne (@BubzArt) and Jessey Pacho (@ArtOfPhade). Their message will inspire the lives of many young people around the world and provide proof that graffiti can paint a positive message, not a negative one. Nicholas Maharaj aka @Twittnick is also a “student” of Mills.

Ann Curry in a moment of blissful expression as she gets authentic with the audience.

Bombshell coach Gigi Belmonico on the Bombshell factor and not letting Twitter become a "popularity contest." See webdoc on her work here.

Disclosure: I have provided some consulting to Webdoc who was one of the 140Conf sponsors.

Jeff Jarvis on the #140Conf Stage: You Tweeties Have Attacked the Sanctity of the Article

Here's a fun Webdoc on Jeff Jarvis following his talk at the 140 Conference last week in New York. It's a great example of how easily and quickly you can mix media, such as photos, text and a live Twitter stream all in one place.

I got there late, so was sorry to have missed him on-stage. Jeff, I heard you were inspiring as always.

Disclosure: I've been providing some consulting to the Webdoc team.

FutureMed: Healthcare & Medicine Migrate From Linear Growth to Exponential Growth

I just finished attending a mind blowing event called FutureMed, the medical arm if you like, of Singularity University, which was founded by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil. Director, curator and chair of the program is Daniel Kraft, who together with a dedicated team, brought in some of the smartest creators and thinkers in medicine and healthcare for the 5 day long program.

Ask yourself: what is the impact that exponential technologies will have on medicine and healthcare? What was your initial response? Whether you're a scientist, physician, venture capitalist or biomed executive, the answers are profound because of the fast rate technology is developing, improving and having a direct impact on the "well-being" of our lives.

What's unique about the event is not just the content, which is deep and thought provoking and brings in insights from the top in their fields, but the structure of the event itself. Imagine a combination of panels, lectures and field trips with demos, workshops and breakout sessions all under one roof with only 70 or so attendees.

In other words, the intimacy of the event creates an environment where not only do you have an opportunity to have your answers questioned (and challenged) directly, but you have quality time with the speakers and technology creators, so you can more effectively understand what lies ahead -- and then act upon it. It also means that attendees are vetted, so not only is the speaker line-up phenomenal, but the attendees themselves have a host of honors, accolades and accomplishments, all of which result in an environment where the brightest minds can come together to learn, create and grow. A community is formed in which like-minds in medicine and healthcare can accomplish more together than they can alone in their respective fields. (Below is Peter Diamandis and Daniel Kraft in the first session of Day One).

While clearly not everyone in healthcare thinks our system is broken and not everyone is looking for alternative means (and more effective means) for care and the way we diagnose and treat patients, those who do, have the hurdles of structure, regulations, linear thinking and legal implications to climb dare they try anything new outside defined parameters.

Challenging the status quo is never easy but if through a combination of persistence, trial and error and really smart, caring and passionate thinkers who want to make a difference, things can change, particularly as you begin to see validation after validation for your thinking (and actions) along the way. In other words, linear thinking "be gone."

As CNET described the environment for participants, "For attendees, who range from executives in the medical field to practicing doctors to entrepreneurs looking for the next area to invest in, and who come from countries all over the world, FutureMed gives access to talks on topics as diverse as personalized medicine; the future of pharma; patient engagement; regenerative medicine; neuromedicine; synthetic biology; the future of medical education; global health and the hospital of the future; and more."

Ray Kurzweil and XPrize founder Peter Diamandis kicked things off with the notion that advances in healthcare and medicine have migrated from linear growth to exponential growth. As recapped so well in the MedGadget summary which you'll find me referencing a number of times because their coverage of the event was so extensive: "One fascinating insight from Ray’s talk was that these exponentially growing advances are often the combination of many different paradigms that grow and develop in a sigmoidal fashion. The exponential growth of computational power per dollar, for instance, is driven by say, vaccum tubes, which start slow, progress extremely rapidly, and then level off, only to be replaced by transistors, which did the same thing until integrated circuits came into the picture. Collectively, even though each of these technological paradigms hit a wall at some point, they were replaced by another advance that allowed the final outcome of computational power to continue to scale exponentially. In proof of this, Ray showed us what seemed to be an exponentially increasing number of charts that demonstrated exponential technological growth."

Three-time astronaut Dan Barry and Gabor Forgacs addressed the future of 3D printing technologies and how they’ll have a significant impact on both consumer and medical products. 

Another message we heard from many of the speakers, is how low the costs are going, from sensors that we wear and can self diagnose to the world of 3D printing, which using both plastics and metals, doesn't cost more to use.  

In addition to 3D printing, Dan Barry talked about one of his favorite topics: robots.

There's no question; robots are getting smarter and smarter. Through sensors, robots are learning how to put objects in the right location and in the right spots within that location, i.e., product placement into a particular location on a particular shelf. "We want to move up the ladder even further," says Barry. "We want robots to not just organize but to sense, throw and manipulate."

Robot's dexterity is improving and their movement is getting more and more fluid. A robot’s hands can correspond to a human’s movements.

Dan gave a useful example of the impact on a human body when they do a space walk. He says, "it takes 4 hours just to get the nitrogen out of our system, but you can do a space walk with a robot through virtual reality and get the job done a lot faster."  

He also brought up the social and ethical implications of people who may choose robots as their companions rather than human beings. In the future, robots will become true companions for people who are lonely, have lost their loved ones or generally just want companionship. Hmmm. Not sure about companionship (for me that is), but I definitely get the value of robots in eldercare and have already seen amazing advancements coming out of Willow Garage, where their PR2s are being trained to put dishes away, set the table and clean among other things.

On the Data Driven Healthcare panel, Stanford University's Dan Riskin talked about the convergence of devices. Says Riskin, "We’re able to take these platforms, such as an iPhone or a computer system, pull together valuable information and make it really useful. We’re seeing an innovation shift to mature platforms."

As for devices and technology, medical intervention will become an app. In fact, it's already starting to happen. Apps will be prescribed just like medication, i.e, welldoc shows a decrease in diabetics problems (a 4 fold benefit from an app than using medications alone).

We also heard about a perspective on the fundamental flaws of the RCT, which included things like the long term nature of it (often a decade to change care), the high expense (not affordable without support), the fact that it can be biased (selected based on drug and device firms) and lastly, that they're poorly generalizable. It’s just not working and ineffective.

Other apps are able to extract words/language that a patient uses and put them into a matrix to show how these words relate to each other, i.e., fever, nausea, chest tightness. The power of analytics is helping the doctor make a diagnosis by structuring a record so that he/she has more data and beyond that, some actual “meaning” within that data.

An example that was given was a test they did with a small group of patients who got re-admitted into the hospital. They did an analysis and discovered what contributed to people being re-admitted to the hospital and more importantly, why. The results helped with quality improvement and flow of data.

A force behind eLegs is Iceland-born Eythor Bender from Berkeley Bionics. They augment humans with wearable, artifi­cially intelligent bionic devices called exoskeletons. Below is a young man demonstrating it to the FutureMed audience, showing how flexible and dynamic his world has become using their technology. Since visuals (and patient feedback) is most powerful, check out their YouTube channel for stories and use cases and their eLegs FAQ for the hows and whys. All I can say is: inspiring. There are no words for the rest.

Below Tamara Mena talks about her dream of being able to accept her college diploma standing rather than in wheelchair.

Healthtap founder Ron Gutman pushed the need to unite consumers and physicians in personal health – both the data and the conversation. In other words, get physicians into the game and allow them to particate in the conversation so they can access this data in real time and better help their patients. The two step approach involves creating an infrastructure, then getting the physicians to engage with the data so its always up to-date and therefore relevant. It’s essentially a database that combines data, conversations, and personalization around the patient so the physician can be more effective in their care and decisions.  

Sutha Kamal talked about feedback loops, which was a constant theme throughout the program. If I (a patient), can access data in real time through a wearable sensor and make sense of that data, then I can help my doctor better understand what is happening with my health over time. Feedback loops provoke action. (also refer to the beginning of my TEDxSV post where Wired's Chris Anderson talks about the same thing citing examples).

If you have no "meaning" from the data, then essentially you have a "broken" feedback loop. Data without meaning doesn't move a patient to take the right action OR have the right conversations with their doctors and other experts. "When you get this data, that data should belong to you," says Kamal. "We want to understand the things that you would adhere to but don’t today. Feedback is personal but meaning needs to be in that personal data so you, the patient, end up doing something with the data."

Ultimately, if you think your body is a “black box,” aka poor health, you’re going to end up getting depressed because you don’t know where to start. In the future, a lot of this gathered data will end up on our phones because they're with us all the time.   

Google's Roni Zeiger says, "our cell phones will become our data lens for information about our bodies. You will also be able to access information in real time about the workflow of a hospital and the wait of the line in the emergency room. The patient is at the center of information flow and decision making."

The patient has ALL of the data because they know how they feel better than anyone else does. The data transmitted from a patient's body in the not too distant future, will be used to allow physicians to look at your veins and arteries remotely on a device. Ones and zeros will be flowing back (aka the patient’s data), with analysis so the physicians can make real-time diagnostics and decisions.

It’s happening now with sleep devices and soon it will be happening from a lot of different sources. He also gave examples of smart health realted search queries like “poison control,” which immediately returns the number for the US poison control center, and “suicide,” which displays the number for the US suicide prevention hotline.  

Additionally, people are putting their data online, on Twitter, Patients Like Me and in other places and asking people to mine that data in a way that will be useful for their care givers and doctors. The distinction between data and conversations are becoming blurred, and eventually they’ll go away.

Lawrence Sherman added wit and humor to a talk on medical education - video clips of his talk can be found here and he tweets over at @meducate.

Esther Dyson and health economist Carol McCall discussed behavior change and no surprise, feedback loops were raised again.

Gamification is a natural example, where incentives are given for a a particular behavior. Esther asked: "Where are the HR execs in this conversation?"

There’s an increasing trend in employer benefits where companies can start to engage with employees in innovative ways that has a positive impact on their health.

On reimbursement, McCall suggested that rather than see this as a barrier, think about creative ways to compensate. She noted that “there are ways for these things to pay for themselves.”

Google's Astro Teller gave a fascinating talk about body monitoring. He asserts that body monitoring isn't really about healthcare. "It misses the point," he says. "That way of thinking derails us from understanding what body monitoring can actually become in the future. Fitness people tend to be quantitative nuts. If you drive at the group that makes the most sense, you miss all the other amazing opportunities."

He talked about major obvious opportunities in this space, such as the “patch” which is very small and very cheap. Other trends around body monitoring in the future?

Upselling new pieces of value to the same wearer by showing value and cost effectiveness. Passive monitoring will also be big, he says, because at the end of the day, people don't like to "do" a lot for their health but they do want to be healthy. Passive monitoring allows us to have sensors on our bodies, but we don’t have to think about them. He's spot on about that one.

Monitors can tell us how much time people spend on their computers, their heart beats, the "way" they use something, such as a mouse. By monitoring a "behavior" such as mouse movement, you can get an idea of visual motor quality which is often a result of sleep deprivation or early warnings of Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease.

With sensors, people often ask “what does it measure?” Teller says, "this is not the point. We want the guess/surrogate to be better than it makes the statement about and we want accuracy to be good enough that we can make a better analysis overall about your body."

He also reminded us that while we’ve spent a lot of time sequencing the human genome, we haven’t spent much time sequencing the human lifestyle. Wearable body monitoring isn’t about being quantified, reinforcing his point by saying that "Mary Jo Jane" (aka the average person) doesn’t want to be quantified.

"Wearable body monitoring is about having the right parts of the world know who you are and in what you want and need in a million little ways, in real time, and all the time."

At the end of the day, you want people/things/data to respond to what you need without you having to think about it. AND, there will literally be a million apps for that. (his prediction is 1 million+ apps by 2015).

Check out the CBS Interactive Smart Planet clip for a "short" on Dan Barry's talk. And for incredibly in-depth coverage of the entire event, check out the summaries by MedGadget by the day.

Day One Summary: Ray Kurzweil, Gabor Forgacs, Eythor Bender and more. 

Day Two Summary: Eric Schadt, Esther Dyson, Kaiser's Innovation Center.

Day Three Summary: Robert Hariri, Mike West, Autodesk and more. 

Day Four Summary: Andrew Hessel, Philip Low, Intuitive Surgical and more.

Day Five Summary: Erik Rasmussen, Andy Kogelnik, Brad Peterson and Goodbyes. 

And let's not forget David Bolinsky and team's incredible animation.

For a mind numbing experience, check out their site for a video that will take you through the human body in the most exciting way you could ever have imagined. (it's a bit like being on a Back to Future ride). Below, a glimpse of the magic they have created for companies, healthcare institutions and hospitals.

Below is a shot from the FutureMed graduation at NASA AMES in Silicon Valley on the last night, a group shot taken during the week and one taken at an after party. And, here are some images I shot from the kick off party, which includes an overview of the program and the first day.

Disclosure: I provided some consulting to FutureMed.

Call Advertising Market Acquisition: Marchex Buys Jingle Networks (the FREE411 Guys)

Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHX) announced the acquisition of Jingle Networks, adding a growing source of mobile distribution to its call advertising network. 

The deal is that Marchex plans to pay up to $62.5 million in cash and stock for Jingle Networks, which is a leading providers of mobile voice search performance advertising and technology solutions. Some may know them through their service: 1-800-FREE411.

Jingle Networks’ core business is providing performance advertising solutions to mobile carriers and mobile network operators so that advertising agencies and businesses can leverage in-call advertising, including pay-for-call, to gain new customers over the phone or through the use of mobile applications.  Over the last twelve months, Jingle Networks has added numerous mobile distribution partners and grown its mobile partner call volume by more than 200%. 

Combining energies, the Marchex Call Advertising Network will now have an annualized reach of more than 500 million phone calls across digital media, including mobile.  This new call advertising network empowers both large and small businesses to reach customers when they are ready to buy.  As the digital advertising market shifts to incorporate phone calls in a more significant way, the Marchex Call Advertising Network is best positioned to provide solutions to advertising agencies and businesses due to its open platform approach using all digital media platforms and supporting all partner types.

 

Driven by the rapid adoption of mobile and smart phones, mobile carriers and network operators are seeing a significant rise in the number of consumers leveraging voice search to find businesses.  Voice search, however, can be costly for mobile carriers and network operators given the technology and other items necessary to operate the service.    

Call advertising helps businesses acquire and up-sell new customers through phone calls, by reaching customers when they are ready to buy.  Marchex provides unique phone numbers and analytics tools that are used by advertisers to place, measure and optimize campaigns across all digital media channels, which helps these businesses increase their sales.  Call advertising and analytics technologies are more important than ever to track and measure the success of call advertising campaigns in order to help advertisers better optimize their call advertising strategies to increase impact, maximize spend and deliver better sales results for their business.