Building EndoGoddess Kids App

I am super excited to announce that work on the EndoGoddess Kids App will begin through the 10x accelator program on June 25th! 10x is a mentorship-driven investment program designed for energetic and game-changing entrepreneurs. 10x is partnering with Ohio’s New Entrepreneurs (ONE) Fund, an innovative business accelerator designed to attract and retain the best and brightest talent in Ohio. Teams such as the EndoGoddess Team are awarded $20,000 to bring a project to life over a 10-week period.

The EndoGoddess Team will be creating the new EndoGoddess Kids App built for young children with type 1 diabetes and their families. The app will include a new rewards and gaming feature similar in concept to the classic Tamagotchi virtual pet (pictured above). The virtual pet, which will need to be 'fed' by recording glucoses within the app, is expected to encourage engagement in daily diabetes glucose checking by the child based on appointment dynamic game mechanics theory.

The EndoGoddess Kids App virtual pet will include a reincarnation of my sweet golden retriever, Cooper Dyer, who passed away last year due to cancer. So, needless to say, the EndoGoddess Kids App is a labor of love for me. I will share details of the process and of course information about the launch toward the end of the summer. So excited!!

EndoGoddess App Crowdfunding

At the recent Doctors 2.0 & You conference in Paris that I attended, I heard a great presentation by Dr. Bertalan Mesko (also known as @Berci on twitter) about the power of crowdsourcing in medicine. Dr. Mesko created Webicina which provides curated medical social media resources in over 80 medical topics in over 17 languages using expert crowdsourcing communities.

Crowdsourcing is increasingly becoming a popular technique to help solve complex problems by leveraging the power of individuals and teams, mostly outside of traditional networks. Crowdsourcing provides a unique opportunity to exchange and share data and information through collective intelligence and providing a diverse array of solutions from solvers with experience across a multitude of disciplines. Crowdsourcing can be used not only to help solve problems but also to capture intelligence (data and information) in novel ways through the use of various platforms.

Kickstarter puts crowdsourcing into action by providing an online platform for funding creative projects. However, kickstarter does not accept medical projects. Kickstarter for medical projects is to launch in several weeks (mid June): Medstartr. Medstartr facilitates gathering monetary resources from the general public and circumvents many traditional avenues of investment for projects. The term has been dubbed crowdfunding. Project owners choose a deadline and a target minimum of funds to raise. If the chosen target is not gathered by the deadline, no funds are collected (this is known as a provision point mechanism). Money pledged by donors is collected using a third party source such as Amazon Payments. The EndoGoddess App Kickstarter/Medstartr submission video explains the crowdfunding project as follows:

Crowdfunding provides opportunities for the patients and their loved ones to give small scale financing support to health-related technologies that they want to see within the healthcare system that they are experiencing. Who better to invest in the healthcare system than the people who are affected most by it? In other words, a system for the people by the people. Makes sense to me, let's do it!  Here is the link to preview the EndoGoddess App crowdfunding project in kickstarter-format : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/endogoddess/1045368863?token=3b8aa0f8.

Watch for the official launch of the EndoGoddess App crowfunding project on Medstartr in the coming weeks so you can donate! :)

Whole Food and Technology

What is the heart and soul of good health? It's actually not technology, it's local whole foods. As an endocrinologist, nutrition researcher and a local foods advocate and volunteer at Local Matters (nonprofit in Ohio), I know this is true. I am very excited about the new upcoming awesome PBS series 'Food Forward' which features the important work done by whole food heroes. Here is a trailer for the series:

Perhaps whole food and mobile technology may be next step for good health...definitely a dream for me as a part of the EndoGoddess future. Monetizing a mobile strategy that is a part of the local whole foods ecosystem is unclear to me, however, at this time. Sadly, this prevents me from working on this project at the present time. I would certainly welcome any thoughts or ideas from readers on how to monetize whole food and mobile technology.

Sanofi 2012 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge

I am super excited to enter an EndoGoddess App idea (in partnership with Duet Health mobile software startup) into the Sanofi 2012 Data Design Diabetes Innovation Challenge summarized in this short video:






The Innovation Challenge is run by Sanofi US and aligned with the United States government federal initiative to use an open dialogue to drive action toward a three-part aim: innovation in the quality, delivery and cost of diabetes care. The kickoff earlier this year crowd-sourced answers to the question, "What matters most to you?" as it relates to diabetes in order to focus the design winners on products that matter most to patients. All intellectual property and equity remains the property of its creators as Sanofi US seeks only to guide the mentorship and development process. The prizes include:

• Access to entrepreneurial resources, through a partnership with Startup America.

• A Design & Prototyping Bootcamp to orient the semi-finalists to human-centered design and user experience, develop the understanding of diabetes and teach rapid prototyping methodologies.

• Total monetary awards of more than $200,000 by Sanofi US, along with invaluable mentorship and ongoing support.

Last year's challenge winner, Ginger.io, created an app platform for patients to journal their diabetes data that then alerts caregivers to concerning behavioral changes. Following the Innovation Challenge, Ginger.io raised $1.7 million  in seed funding and expanded its company with recent addition of Rock Health Accelerator mobile startup, Pipette. Pipette creates mobile software that can detect data patterns or outlier concerns in patient-reported outcomes.



The semi-finalists will be announced March 30th so keeping my fingers crossed. Who knows, dreams can come true right? However, even if it's not my project that is selected, I am excited about the wins for diabetes. :)



(Disclaimer: Sanofi US makes a few common diabetes products: Lantus insulin and Apidra insulin. They will also be releasing the iBGstar glucose meter in the coming months. I do not have any stock or kick-backs from Sanofi US but am working with the creator of the iBGstar meter, AgaMatrix, to develop EndoGoddess app connectivity amongst all of their meters. Again, no stock or kick-backs from AgaMatrix either. Just working towards a future in mobile health of connectivity between all apps and all meters which takes one step at a time.)

Hispanic Community and EndoGoddess App

I am honored to be invited to discuss the EndoGoddess app use for diabetes in the Hispanic community at the National Hispanic Medical Association 16th Annual Conference in DC with a White House briefing appearance as well! Please let me know what YOU think would make the EndoGoddess app most impactful for the Hispanic community. Of course changing the content to Spanish, but what else? As of today, the content is not the primary feature of the EndoGoddess app that users find the most helpful.

Picking My Partner: Eproximiti Duet Health

When I began programming a simple app to automate the SMS texting protocol that I designed and used in a small pilot study with my patients, I did not intend on making it commercially available. In fact, I intended the app to be used only by myself for research. My original app is pictured on the left.

However, several mobile health startup companies approached me over the past year with ideas to expand the app. I ended up partnering with Eproximiti after they introduced themselves to me. Their software platform is called Duet Health as it involves both the patient and the doctor in development. When we met earlier this year, I was instantly impressed with their patient-centered mission, their local location in Columbus Ohio, and their swift ability to produce beautiful and functional app products. Together, we designed the EndoGoddess app with many more features than the app that I originally programmed on my own. I highly recommend collaborating with Eproximiti to any physicians out there who have a mobile health app idea that they would like to see come to life.

In The Beginning...

I am starting a new blog. I have decided to chronicle the adventures that I am having upon the release of my new EndoGoddess app. Health app development feels a little bit like writing a book that 'does something'. So, I thought I'd actually write about what it feels like to share my app, aka my baby, with you and let it do what it was born to do...help motivate and celebrate the hard work it takes to live well with diabetes!