Jonah Comstock

NantHealth, the personalized medicine company founded by Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, has registered for a $92 million initial public offering. That number may seem low for a company used to securing nine-figure investments, but it is likely just a placeholder.

Marking a "new chapter as a company," Nokia Technologies announced Tuesday that it plans to acquire French connected health device maker Withings for $191 million. Withings' smartphone-connected scales, blood pressure cuffs, activity trackers and, recently, thermometers can enable remote patient monitoring and population health management programs. Nokia has been searching for a new focus area since it sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft. In March, Nokia Technology President Ramzi Haidamus suggested that future could lie with healthcare.  "We’re also looking at another area where we have not launched any products – digital health," he told Fortune last month. "Digital health is something that comes very natural to Nokia... A lot of research is happening right now in the field of digital health." With the Withings announcement, Haidamus has continued to speak of digital health as a major new direction for Nokia. "We’re now starting a new chapter as a company, this one focused on connecting you to better health through technology," he wrote in a statement. "We aim to help you lead a happier, healthier life through the kind of beautifully designed products that you expect from Nokia," he added. "To help us do this as fast as possible, we will be welcoming Withings into the Nokia family. A leader in digital health products and apps designed to improve everyday well-being and long term health, Withings will combine perfectly with Nokia’s heritage of mobility and connectivity." Withings CEO Cedric Hutchings also shared his thoughts in a blog post. "We started Withings in 2008 to explore the possibilities provided by the Internet of Things,” he wrote. "Today we can proudly say we are leading the connected health revolution, inventing smart, beautiful things to give people the knowledge they need to live happier, healthier lives. When we were approached by Nokia, it was inspiring to discover how perfectly aligned our visions are. Together, we believe we can truly transform the world." Hutchings also assured Withings users that the acquisition won’t lead to any change in the experience of using Withings products or apps.  "We’ve been impressed with the plans the Nokia team has shared with us both for Preventive Health and Patient Care," he wrote. "As soon as we close the deal, we can start working together to determine our way forward as one team with a broad but focused portfolio of incredible products and innovations." A version of this story was originally posted by Healthcare IT News' sister site, MobiHealthNews.

Most Google Glass-focused startups have pivoted away from healthcare, but Augmedix is keeping its sights set on helping physicians.

The app, part of a broader strategy to make the hospital’s medical knowledge available to consumers, can offer simple advice about fever and medication to parents. 

Researchers say that pilot program demonstrates how readily available technologies can be used along with an EHR to improve communication between doctors and patients with type 1 diabetes.

At the same time that it revealed CareKit, Apple announced that ResearchKit would be updated to more easily make use of genetic data, via a module designed by consumer genetics company 23andMe. Apple also added other modules for common medical tests to ResearchKit. “The response to ResearchKit has been fantastic. Virtually overnight, many ResearchKit studies became the largest in history and researchers are gaining insights and making discoveries that weren’t possible before,” Apple COO Jeff Williams said in a statement. “Medical researchers around the world continue to use iPhone to transform what we know about complex diseases, and with continued support from the open source community, the opportunities for iPhone in medical research are endless.” [Also: Apple unveils CareKit health tracking framework, first app to focus on Parkinson's] "This new technology gives researchers a turnkey way to integrate genetics into their studies,” 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki added in another statement. “This will enable research on a much broader scale. Incorporating genetics into a platform with the reach of ResearchKit will accelerate insights into illness and disease even further.” Apple announced three ResearchKit apps that will begin incorporating genetic data, one new app and two existing ones. PPD Act will use genetic data to explore the question of why postpartum depression affects some women and not others. The study will be led by the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and the international Postpartum Depression: Action Towards Causes and Treatment Consortium. The National Institute of Mental Health will provide spit kits to facilitate genetic testing. “There’s so much we still need to learn about postpartum depression and it may be DNA that provides the key to better understanding why some women experience symptoms and others do not,” Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, director of the Perinatal Psychiatry Program at the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders, said in a statement. “With ResearchKit, and now the ability to incorporate genetic data, we’re able to engage women with postpartum depression from a wide geographic and demographic range and can analyze the genomic signature of postpartum depression to help us find more effective treatments.” Stanford's MyHeartCounts app will incorporate data from 23andMe users who are already using the app. The data will help them to study genetic predisposition toward heart conditions and how they interrelate to lifestyle and activity factors. Mount Sinai's Asthma Health app will "use genetic data from 23andMe customers to help researchers better understand ways to personalize asthma treatment," according to Apple. “Collecting this type of information will help researchers determine genomic indicators for specific diseases and conditions,” Mount Sinai Genomics Professor Eric Schadt said in a statement. “Take asthma, for example. ResearchKit is allowing us to study this population more broadly than ever before and through the large amounts of data we’re able to gather from iPhone, we’re understanding how factors like environment, geography and genes influence one’s disease and response to treatment.” [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] In addition to genetics, new modules that have been contributed to ResearchKit include a test for tone audiometry; the ability to measure reaction time through delivery of a known stimulus to a known response; an assessment tool for the speed of information processing and working memory; a means to use the mathematical puzzle Tower of Hanoi for cognition studies; and a timed walk test.  The brand new CareKit framework, meanwhile, is designed to enable patients to track their care and to share that health data with physicians and family members. The first two apps focus on Parkinson's Disease and helping patients adhere to pust-surgery care plans.  Twitter: @JonahComstock

A new study by the Scripps Translational Science Institute has found no short-term benefit in health costs or outcomes for patients who monitored their health with connected devices, whcih comes as a blow to the booming mobile health market.