Last month, Medgadget announced the development of the Magnifi iPhone adapter from start-up Arcturus Labs (Palo Alto, CA), which connects your iPhone 4 or 4S to optical instruments ranging from microscopes to binoculars and telescopes.

To learn more about the evolution of the Magnifi, we spoke with newlyweds Xianne and Isaac Penny who came up with the rough idea for the device while in grad school at Stanford University. They began the development of the product after graduating. Isaac Penny also worked as an engineer at Intuitive Surgical (Sunnyvale, CA), where he helped create the daVinci Single-Site line of instruments.

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Next up in our coverage of semi-finalists for Sanofi’s Data Design Diabetes Demo Day is LiveHealth.

LiveHealth CEO Chris Gay started off by showing data that demonstrates that diabetes self-management can really help compliance and health outcomes — but education necessary for proper self-management requires 15 visits in the first year alone, which is too much for many patients, especially those without reliable transport or means.

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We think the most ambitious idea among semi-finalists for Sanofi’s Data Design Diabetes Demo Day came from EnduringFX, which used to be called Activity-based Integrated Data Model (seriously? another good idea on the name change, guys!)

EnduringFX’s president and founder, Jim Stritzinger, looks a bit like a young Tim cook. He’s from South Carolina, and a lot of EnduringFX’s activity is focused so far in that state. He began his pitch noting that American obesity is driving the terrible numbers we’re seeing in diabetes, as well as CHF and arthritis … 42% of the population is projected to be obese by 2030. He showed a heat map for how much of the US South is at risk for diabetes.

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Next up in our coverage of semi-finalists for Sanofi’s Data Design Diabetes Demo Day is GreenDot, which used to be called Diabetes 3.0 (good idea on the name change, guys!)

GreenDot was started by two UCSF endocrinologists – Jenise Wong and Aaron Neinstein. We believe they’re the only doctor-originated company in this bunch. They were frustrated, and their patients were frustrated, with the overwhelming amount of data generated by pumps and glucometers. Data in its own format, and in nonstandard layouts, is challenging for patients to interpret and difficult for doctors to compare.

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First up in our coverage of semi-finalists for Sanofi‘s Data Design Diabetes Demo Day is iRetainRx. Previous coverage here and here.

iRetainRx’s founder and CEO, David Parpart, began the pitch boldly, by saying, “We are going to save 500,000 lives this decade.” He then went on to describe how their interactive mobile system will allow caregivers, patients and pharmacists to collaborate on care plans. See, for every 100 prescriptions, only a fraction are filled, and only a fraction of those are even taken correctly. This attrition is particularly difficult with diabetes, where the regimens are complicated, the effect of the drugs can be hard to notice, and yet: noncompliance leads to huge extra social costs.

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What do one of the most recognizable doctors in America and a rapidly growing electronic medical record (EMR) start-up have in common? Apparently, a commitment to public health and fascination with health data. This past weekend Medgadget was invited to observe Dr. Mehmet Oz, of The Dr. Oz Show, team up with Practice Fusion to screen a few hundred Philadelphians at the Temple University School of Medicine. Dozens of physicians and medical students were on hand to provide a “15-minute physical” consisting of BMI, blood pressure, and waist circumference measurements as well as lab tests including a lipid panel (HDL, LDL, and triglycerides) and blood glucose, made possible by Alere‘s mobile lab device, Cholestech LDX, which synced directly to Practice Fusion’s EMR. This allowed Practice Fusion to generate a real-time “report card” for Philadelphia, which Dr. Oz then presented to Mayor Michael Nutter in addition to taking the Mayor’s blood pressure (135/80) and waist circumference.

We had the opportunity to catch up with Practice Fusion as well as Dr. Oz and his medical unit’s clinical event director, Mike Hoaglin (pictured above with Dr. Oz), to ask them about the screening and what excites them about collecting city-wide data.

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An online screening tool from Carl Zeiss Vision enables visitors to test their visual acuity, contrast vision, and color vision. Designed for people who wear glasses or contacts as well as those who don’t, the site was developed for the company’s “100 Years of Zeiss Precision Lenses” anniversary and as part of Healthy Vision Month. The site provides instructions that enable the user’s computer monitor to be configured to optimize the accuracy of the test, including instructions for how to achieve the correct settings for screen calibration, gamma calibration (brightness), and how far the eyes should be from the monitor. Results from the test come back within five minutes or less to let the user know if their vision is good, average or poor.

To learn more about the platform, Medgadget spoke to Jeff Hopkins, Carl Zeiss Vision’s senior manager of professional affairs.

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Last week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced its latest round of grant winners for its Grand Challenges Explorations initiative. Among the recipients is a team from the University of California, San Diego and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that is developing a tiny, flexible fetal monitor. We wrote about the technology behind the device back in August and were able to hear from David Icke, CEO of MC10, the company helping to commercialize it, at both FutureMed in February and at last month’s TEDMED conference.

Described as an electronic “tattoo”, the device is a wearable patch of circuits, sensors, and wireless transmitters that sticks to the skin like a temporary tattoo and is able to stretch and flex with the skin. The researchers hope that the final product will continuously measure and monitor uterine contractions, fetal heart rate and oxygen, and maternal heart rate and body temperature.

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The U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) recently announced plans to deploy CogniSens‘ NeuroTracker system to “improve situational awareness, multiple target tracking and decision making efficiency of soldiers as it relates to combat.” While NeuroTracker isn’t the military’s first computer-based training system, it is the first one that doesn’t involve simulated combat environments.

The premise is simple: the user sits in front of a 3D screen displaying eight moving balls and is then instructed to follow four of the balls for eight minutes, with the remaining four acting as decoys. As the game progresses, it becomes more complex and faster paced. The principle behind the game, according to CogniSens, is that “the brain structurally rewires itself if stimulated intensively and repeatedly…the same way muscle cells improve with physical conditioning.”

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Brain Resource (San Francisco, CA) has been busy lately. In March the company launched a partnership with Aetna to use its Web-based tools to help individuals optimize brain health, reduce stress, and increase productivity. Last month, the company announced that its technology would be used at St. Gregory Retreat Center (Des Moines, IA) to improve the cognitive and emotional capacities of patients undergoing drug and alcohol treatment. The company’s most recent partnership is with Keas (San Francisco, CA), which will offer Brain Resource’s brain exercises and online content as part of its cloud-based social gaming-based employee wellness platform.

The Keas program enables users to identify goals and then track progress towards reaching them. To measure that progress, the site uses a points-based system, which can be used to incentivize friendly competition among employees to meet health goals such as weight loss. “Our content fits right into that paradigm because we award ‘brain points’ for working the brain-health exercises that we are providing Keas,” Gregory A. Bayer, PhD, CEO of Brain Resource told Medgadget. The company’s proprietary exercises that will be featured on the Keas platform include “Think Focus,” “Relaxation Room,” and “Catch the Feeling,” which are designed to reduce stress, improve focus, and promote positive mind states and productivity.

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