While we’ve attended several wakes for Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault softly, softly registered with FDA in early June as a Class 1 medical device with no pre-market approval (see registration). The regulation it is under pertains to medical image storage devices and not MDDS (medical device data systems), recently set up by FDA also in Class 1 [TA 15 Feb]. The detective on the case of both the dearly departed and the survivor is Daniel Matlis of Axendia, who also notes in his blog, like Colombo, one more thing….Microsoft Health Solution Group’s Director of Regulations and Policy, their official correspondent with FDA, is the former Director of Device Evaluation at FDA. Presumably she knows her onions. Google discontinues Google Health while Microsoft lists HealthVault as a medical device. (Life-Science Panorama)
Meanwhile, at the come-as-you-are post-mortem, the creator of Google Health, Adam Bosworth, told his TechCrunch interviewer that Google Health expired because ‘it’s not social’ and wasn’t fun….not like Keas, his current startup, which makes a team game out of incentivizing healthy behaviors (earlier TechCrunch interview) and ties in with company rewards. (A dish served cold, anyone?)