One of the reasons for the merger is to reach a larger audience. We all know how difficult it is to raise money for certain areas in healthcare. I just mentioned one last week and I like this one as it doesn’t sell your data and profiles like so many other consumer mobile health apps and devices. 
Actually on some of those I do wonder from time to time as to how solvent they are, in other words could they stand alone and show a profit without the revenue they get from selling data? That is one of the biggest deterrents today with consumers and health apps and devices in knowing that their data is sold and that companies make billions in profits doing it. Again, I’m all out for those like the Tricoder from Scanadu that are attempting to really provide a good product for consumers and drop the bottom feeding data selling, as more and more is getting use out of context just to make a buck, give a consumers a good product without selling them down the river and it might just catch on.
Scanadu Tricoder Scout–One mHealth Device Not Selling Data For Profit Goes To Crowdfunding, Will the FDA Consider Privacy in Their Mobile Device Approval System
Here’s a back post on some that use platforms with fuzzy privacy policies. Theres’ even a community over there for the Blue Button Challenge. I’m all for any apps that make it simple for both Vets and Medicare participants to get their medical data by all means. Again I like those devices that can synch to a non tethered PHR to maintain all the information you choose to save and share versus the “other” model. BD
Jawbone Buys BodyMedia. Launches New “Up App” Platform–Partnerships Allow for More of Your Data and Profiles To Be Sold As Data Selling Epidemic Continues to Grow
Health Tech Hatch, a site launched last fall as a crowdfunding site specifically for health startups, is joining forces with one of the biggest crowdfunding platforms on the web, Indiegogo.
From the beginning, the company planned to help health startups both crowdfund and beta test their products with patients and physicians. But now, founder and CEO Patricia Salber said Health Tech Hatch plans to focus more closely on the beta testing side, while working on the crowdfunding piece through Indiegogo.
“We quickly learned that it’s really, really hard to raise much money if you’re trying to raise for a startup company [that isn't] any of the companies that have a cool device,” she said.
Startups like Misfit Wearables, which is developing a wearable activity tracker, and Scanadu, which recently set an Indiegogo record for its tricorder-like device, succeed in crowdfunding because they’re essentially offering a pre-sale through their campaigns, she said. But for startups focused on software, general crowdfunding can be tricky, because funders don’t get anything tangible for their contribution and they may want equity in return for their early support. Companies can raise from $5,000 to $20,000, but it’s often not worth the administrative effort and time they have to put in, Salber added.
queries and that’s what business intelligence software does for the most part. There have been articles out to where medical records are sold for research without having the Safe Harbor suggested data items removed. These are items like phone numbers, social security numbers, names and so forth. Public agencies are exempt from a lot of this so here might be one area of concern. 
where it needs to be and all the data that has been opened up by HHS is nice and works well for journalists to analyze and create articles with informational input but does it immediately affect you? Probably not but this does and I call some of this activity the Attack of the Killer Algorithms and started that series two years ago. It is what it is and thus so we should be licensing those who share and sell data, and excise taxing those who sell it as they make billions upon billion with non tangible profits. 
some is well just there. Innovation needs context to gain momentum and use and all of it may lack the proper context to where it really stands to be beneficial. Innovations I think tends to be over used at times and we can innovate until our heads spin but until the context of where the products or computer code is useful, it kind of just sits there, in other words is it useful and where? With the emergence of big data there are certainly some good opportunities out there to find information that has been buried but is all of is going to have earth shattering results? Probably not so innovation needs context to be useful. 
It’s not the data that is exciting, but rather the models that are created that can make it mean something and create some value. Right now the country and maybe the world is off balance with tangibles and intangibles with far too many making a buck off of flipping an analytical algorithm and I think some of this would be beneficial if it were balanced and used with R and D and bringing more tangibles into the US manufacturing world rather than just some more analytical algorithms that get hyped and marketed and basically just move more money from consumers to the 1% side. 
Parenthood and the political bombshell that was a a result. In addition, the Foundation was also criticized for their legal actions against other charities for the use of the word “cure” before the political issue. BD
You should realize that the data is making more than one trip from A to B. As B takes the data and queries it with other data bases and sells it to C. Now C may take this new data base and with what they have purchased and already have in house, they just might be pretty successful at re-identifying the data with a little data scientist or data base tech type work. It happens a lot. You just don’t know how many trips around the horn it makes once it leaves Verizon. That's how this happens, see the link below, how did my data get out there…duh?
and none that they want to kick in money unless there might be a serious tax write off available. This is where things need to go for the future and we have seen it on Wall Street and in healthcare so time to stop taking swords to a battle where the other side is using machines guns for a simple analogy. We keep doing this over and over and it plays out in the form of big OMG articles in the news. It’s all about math and the models used to ensure they are not lying and reducing or expanding risk for profits. 
in the news as that’s what you are going to see until we get some of the right folks in the right places, sad to say. A clip from the HHS soap follows below along with the Congressional OMG material to suck you in to the inflated importance of this whole topic…sad but this is about the best we can seem to do of late. If you wait long enough and follow marketing trends, someone will put out a poll for you to vote on this too…lol…it’s just keeps the distractions moving. Polls are mostly just trying to sell you something be it a product or an idea or political view and can be powerful in the OMB world:) BD 
that sees many patients who can’t pay so a lot of charity cases seen here. Where’s the philanthropy efforts when you need them. According to this article they are just 2 million in debt and geez I read about hospitals who are much further in debt so the number seems small by comparison. 600 people will lose jobs and patients are being moved to other facilities. The hospital also claims the state owes them $6 million. BD