health care

Former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz says the idea for a health care site like CareZone had been germinating for about a decade.

But it wasn't until two years ago that he had some time to really devote to it. It was then that he and his good friend Walter Smith, one of the creators of the Apple Newton, sat down to talk about how they could make a difference in the lives of people who are caring for elderly parents or for children who have issues--people who want a safe place to store medical records and share access to … Read more

Health care can be difficult to access for rural residents in the developing world. San Francisco startup Medic Mobile is working to change that, by providing communications tools to doctors, patients, and community health workers.

SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das speaks with Josh Nesbit, the company's CEO, to find out more about how simple text messaging is being used to provide better health care.

This video originally appeared on SmartPlanet with the headline "Doctors use simple texts to deliver better health care in developing world."

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The "Star Trek" universe may be beloved by millions, but it's entirely fictional. Yet one element of Gene Rodenberry's timeless creation may actually help people with their health care decisions in real life.

The problem faced by millions of people around the world, especially in the third world, and in rural areas of the first world, is that there's not always a doctor around to help figure out what's wrong with you--and sometimes, one isn't even necessary. Sometimes, the right technology could help us determine what's going on in our bodies.

That'… Read more

General Electric and Microsoft have formed a health care company with a 50-50 ownership split. Sound familiar? It should. GE has a similar joint venture with Intel.

Add it up and GE has turned out to be a key partner for Wintel’s health care ambitions.

The GE-Microsoft healthcare joint venture is focused on patient outcomes as well as real-time data. The companies are planning to develop an open platform as well as clinical applications. Microsoft also finds a home for a bevy of technologies acquired when the software giant bought Sentillion two years ago.

With the move, GE has … Read more

Houston, we have a health problem.

About 30 percent of adults in the U.S. have at least two chronic health conditions. Roughly half of a panel of surveyed patients are not complying with doctor's orders. And more than half of Americans could be obese by 2030.

In the coming years it's going to be more important than ever for doctors' offices to be able to automatically track their patients across a variety of parameters, from age and ethnicity to conditions and diseases, and even to compliance levels. Dallas-based health management firm Phytel is hoping that the platform it's unveiling today … Read more

New York start-up ZocDoc plans to expand its online booking service for doctor and dentist appointments to more cities with help from a $50 million Series C venture round from DST Global announced today.

DST Global, which has invested in Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, and Zynga, is also putting its money on ZocDoc, adding to the $20 million the company had previously received from Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures.

ZocDoc is adding about a city a month to its existing roster of urban markets, which include Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., … Read more

Even if you have insurance to cover the cost of your health care, understanding and managing it can still be a nightmare. You go the the doctor or get a procedure or lab test and typically have no idea what it will cost. A bill arrives, but you still don't often know how much you owe and how much the insurance company will pay. Eventually the insurance company mails you an "explanation of benefits," but even that can sometimes be indecipherable.

Enter Simplee, a free online personal health care expense management system. Like a Mint.com for … Read more

In 2000, the U.S. Surgeon General called out dental health as a "silent epidemic" that afflicts poorer population groups even more disproportionately than the health care divide. Yet in the 10 years since, as the debate over medical insurance has intensified, little attention has been paid to the costs of dental care.

If you're not covered by a dental plan of some sort, you're going to pay a lot more than you need to for almost any procedure. That's because most dental insurance plans that pay dentists are based on discounts from the retail prices of the procedures they do. So dentists set retail prices rather high, and have to charge some patients those fees.

But you can get the lower negotiated rates yourself, even if you don't have insurance. As it turns out, large "cost containment networks" exist that organizations and individuals can sign up for. Some unions and state governments use Careington, for example, which has negotiated discount rates with about a quarter of the dentists in the U.S.

A start-up launching today, Brighter.com, takes the Careington network and offers both paid and free subscriptions to it for individuals. The site packages the discounts alongside Webbish tools to make finding dentists easier, too. If you don't have a dental plan (or a dentist), it appears to be a no-brainer to use--the free version at least.

Brighter is not insurance, mind you. The consumer-patient has to make his own decisions about the procedures he's going to buy, and has to pay the dentist directly. Being a member of Brighter grants the consumer a discount off retail prices; Brighter doesn't pay the dentists itself. … Read more

AT&T is making a new foray into the health care market with a business geared toward improving patient care and trimming medical costs.

Announced today, the new AT&T ForHealth unit will deliver a range of wireless, networked, and cloud-based products to doctors, hospitals, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies. The goal is to push the adoption of new technologies to the industry as the country tries to switch over to electronic and digital health care management.

AT&T said it's looking to expand upon some of its current health care projects, which include medicine bottles that … Read more