Editor Donna is exceedingly glad she qualified the LifeWatch V smartphone [TA 10 July] with medical monitoring sensors as ‘does what it claims to do.’ A discussion on the LinkedIn group Connected Health Community (Partners HealthCare, membership required) on a Globes (Israel) article demonstrated a certain skepticism and revealed certain interesting facts about the phone and the company:
- The press release and demonstration in Zurich (LifeWatch AG is Swiss) was specifically embargoed for the US. How meaningful is this type of restriction nowadays? Gizmodo, Medgadget and Qmed are all US-based and their articles are featured on their website. (Telecare Aware is based in UK but with readers worldwide, and isn’t featured–shame on them!).
- It could be because there’s a spot of embarrassment Stateside. Their US company LifeWatch Services, which is based in Illinois, just settled with the US Justice Department for $18.5 million in false Medicare claims related to their main business, ambulatory cardiac telemetry services.
We hope that this is not a tech development too good to be for real, because if it really works and comes in at a price point around the average for smartphones, it could turn the monitoring game upside down. If any of our readers saw the 27 June demonstration, please contact Ed. Donna. Thanks to CHC members Aviv Lotan, Dave Sigall, Dave Malkin and others.
The product is not real and never will be based on the concept rendered on the site.