As consumer-driven health has evolved over the years, health insurers have had to react to constant changes in market and consumer-demand, causing the health plan market to make large and recurring investments in their products, consumer brands, and core distribution channels to remain competitive and stave off new market entrants.

Triple Tree believes we are in a third wave of consumer-driven health; a time which will drive health insurers to attempt to shed historic operating models and reinvent themselves as true business-to-consumer/retail-based enterprises.

Investor’s Meeting – May 11, 2010; La Jolla, CA

The WLSA will conduct an Investor’s Meeting in conjunction with the annual Summit.  The format consists of brief “no PPT” presentations by twelve award winning company leaders in a roundtable setting that includes strategic and financial investors.  Presenters will include relevant regional companies and companies with particularly innovative business or scientific advances.  These companies will be vetted through a competitively judged process through the Triple Tree I Award Program prior to May. Call for nominations will go out in January. (Invitation-only event. If you are an investor and would like an invitation, please click here.)

Summit – May 12, 2010; La Jolla, CA

The Summit is an invitational event and is the unparalleled international think tank that puts CEOs from the world’s most innovative wireless health companies together with global leaders in healthcare and technology. To optimize relationship building and quality, attendance has been capped at 150. (Invitation-only. If you are interested in being considered for invitation, please click here.)

Commercialization Day – May 13, 2010; La Jolla, CA

WLSA invites Go-To-Market teams in companies of all types and sizes to attend this full day of educational tracks.  The largest of the three days in terms of attendance, Commercialization Day will include tracks in 2-3 chronic conditions.  Each track will include presenter perspectives from Regulatory, Innovation, Marketing, and Funding.
(Attendance will be open to the public.)

Wireless Health 2010 – Academic/Industry Conference, October 5-7 in La Jolla, CA. Preeminent researchers and academicians from leading universities and agencies will be invited to submit papers. Papers will be judged in a competitive process and selected for presentation and publication by a panel of experts. Selections for the conference will highlight the best research in wireless health systems and technology.
The General Chairs of the Summit are Irwin Jacobs (chair of the Salk Institute), Dr. Eric Topol, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and Chris Toumazou.  The organizing committee includes Jalal Mapar from the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Shu Chien from UC San Diego, and William Kaiser from UCLA.   More details to come in the future.

WLSA Establishes “Global Partner” Membership Level

Developed to serve the strategic needs of large international companies in their wireless health initiatives, the WLSA has established the Global Partner level as the top level of membership. Global Partners include Qualcomm, AT&T, and Ascension Health. Another recent new member to the Alliance is 3M. 3M has joined as an Industry Partner. Welcome to all new “partners”! For information on membership, please contact Rob McCray, CEO, Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance.

Membership Levels

Global Partner $50K

Strategic Partner $25K

Industry Partner $10K

Innovation Partner $5K

For a full membership list, click here
.

Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance PARTNER NEWS

• Roche Diagnostics has partnered with NeuroVigil to launch a major innovation in collecting and analyzing clinical data.  Read more…
• The West Wireless Health Institute has hired Mehran Mehregany as the institute’s executive vice president of engineering and chief of engineering research. Mehregany officially joined the Institute November 2nd and will be responsible for planning and implementing engineering research and academic initiatives. Read more…
• CONNECT’s 22nd annual Most Innovative New Product “MIP” Awards is being held December 11, 2009 at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines and is almost sold-out. This is San Diego’s “Oscars” for local technology innovation with 800+ in attendance. Among the finalists from wireless health segment are ResMed for its ApneaLink Plus product, and On-Ramp Wireless for its Ultra Link Processing Wireless Communication System. Interested in attending? Click here for more information.
• Helixis partnered with the team from DD Studio to commercialize Pixo, a real-time PCR system.

WLS Segment New & Events

The Wide Appeal of mHealth in the US
(9th October 2009)

A new US study released at International CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2009 by CTIA-The Wireless Association in conjunction with Harris Interactive, finds that almost eight in ten Americans (78%) expressed interest in mHealth (or mobile health) solutions and more than one in ten (15%) said they were extremely/very interested in learning more about it. Interest in mHealth service options was so strong that nearly 1 in 5 (19%) people surveyed said they would upgrade their existing wireless plan to participate and 11% said they would even consider switching wireless providers to receive mobile healthcare services.
Read more…

Creative Extension of Technology for Public Health in 3rd World

(submitted by Mary Wolshok, UC San Diego Extension)

By: Breslauer DN, Maamari RN, Switz NA, Lam WA, Fletcher DA.

UCSF/UC Berkeley Bioengineering Graduate Group, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Light microscopy provides a simple, cost-effective, and vital method for the diagnosis and screening of hematologic and infectious diseases.

In many regions of the world, however, the required equipment is either unavailable or insufficiently portable, and operators may not possess adequate training to make full use of the images obtained. Counterintuitively, these same regions are often well served by mobile phone networks, suggesting the possibility of leveraging portable, camera-enabled mobile phones for diagnostic imaging and telemedicine.
Read more…

Do you have news to share? Please add us to your media distribution list.

About Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance (WLSA)

The WLSA was founded in 2005, through the impetus of innovative organizations like QUALCOMM, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, TripleTree LLC, and CONNECT. The WLSA is the only association of its kind tackling this burgeoning field and the complex issues faced by pharmaceutical companies, reimbursers, hospital systems, carriers, technology innovators, integrators and regulators.

About CONNECT is a non-profit dedicated to creating and sustaining the growth of innovative technology and life science businesses in San Diego. We deliver more than 300 events and programs each year that touch more than 1,000 CEOs and companies.  Our cluster initiatives in wireless-life sciences convergence, clean technology, action & sport innovation and aerospace & unmanned vehicles are helping to diversify and strengthen San Diego’s innovation economy.