Interview with the Center for Connected Health: Center for Connected Health founder and director Joseph Kvedar tells Mobihealthnews about the center’s various wireless health programs: “We have programs in a number of chronic illnesses; heart failure is our most advanced program. For diabetes we have an up and coming, growing program,” Kvedar says. “We have done a lot of interesting things with high blood pressure, both in terms of our use as a provider but also in terms of in the market place as an employee benefit. We have a program up and coming in activity monitoring and weight control. Down the road we will be working on mental health, depression and so forth.” 
Aetna looks to connect apps to its PHR: “If we have learned one thing, it’s that we need to leverage existing devices,” Aetna’s head of eHealth product management, Dan Greden, said at an event in Boston recently. Greden said Aetna plans to connect mobile apps to its online personal health record. “A very good example is the iPhone as exercise tracker,” Greden explained. Greden said because of its accelerometer, the iPhone is a better tool for exercise tracking. iPhone’s accelerometer is “the same technology” found in many of today’s better exercise trackers, including those created by Nike, Greden said.
Should hospitals add iPod Touches to their TV and phone rentals for patients? Silicon Alley Insider’s Nicholas Carlson thinks so. He’s just back from six days in the hospital because of injuries he suffered after a hit-and-run accident in New York City. Carlson advises the industry to dole out iPods to patients so they and their doctors can exchange notes about the patient’s condition.
Google Health gets its first integrated iPhone app: Application developer Ringful announced that its newest application, Asthma Journal, is now available for the iPhone platform. The company claims the free app is the first to integrate with the Google Health personal health record. Asthma Journal enables users to track and report whether they are wheezing, coughing or tight in the chest and tracks the severity of their symptoms. The app then sends the entries to the user’s Google Health account so patients, caregivers and physicians can review the aggregated data.
Brian Dolan is editor of mobihealthnews, the emerging wireless health industry’s daily monitor.
