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Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest

16 points by stanleydrew 16y ago

jasonz 16y ago
very cool - I wonder if a more generalized smart cap for prescription drugs could track usage in the same manner.
- gtracy 16y ago
  There are some companies doing this for general prescriptions. Vitality - http://www.vitality.net/ http://www.vitality.net/ - has a wireless cap that helps track adherence. But asthma is pretty unique since the inhalers are used in "rescue" situations and there are strong geographic correlations that arise from environmental issues.
  - jasonz 16y ago
    Yeah the fact that it tracks the use of inhalers is very clever. It provides a much more rich history of use to help doctors decide the best way to manage their patients. Currently medications for asthmatics are determined by a asthma severity scale (symptom frequency, night time attacks, etc) - so a more fine-grained analytics would be interesting. I would think this approach would work well if applied to other diseases where the frequency that the patient takes the medication is tied to symptoms - chest pain/nitroglycerin or acid-reflux/antacids are a couple of examples.
atomical 16y ago
I seem to recall a winner of the Twilio contest that developed a similar app for reporting symptoms. Couldn't this easily be extended to just about any condition?
- johns 16y ago
  Yep, we had this one win before: http://blog.twilio.com/2010/08/chris-bennett-wins-twilios-anything-goes-contest-for-as-journal.html http://blog.twilio.com/2010/08/chris-bennett-wins-twilios-an...
adityakothadiya 16y ago
Well, I thought the competition was for developers as in indie-developers and not startups! Here is what the description from contest page says - "We've partnered with Union Square Ventures, who are investors in Twilio, to give one developer the opportunity to travel to New York City to meet with Fred Wilson, Albert Wenger, and Brad Burnham." This doesn't seem to be a appropriate winner to me. Please note, I'm not demeaning Asthmapolis' value proposition. I'm just saying, probably they are better suited for TechCrunch Disrupt kind of competiion as a startup, and not developer contests!
- dmor 16y ago
  The theme for the contest was "Building a Business on Twilio" and the description was posted here: http://contests.twilio.com/2010/09/build-your-business-with-twilio-and-win-a-meeting-with-union-square-ventures-ends-927.html http://contests.twilio.com/2010/09/build-your-business-with-... While we can only commit to covering the travel costs for one developer, the contest was open to everyone - including existing startups. "The partners at Union Square Ventures will serve as our judges for this round, and they will select one awesome Twilio-powered company to meet with them in New York City, all expenses paid. Three runners up will each receive $250 in Twilio credit to help get their businesses off the ground."

16 points by stanleydrew 16y ago

jasonz 16y ago

very cool - I wonder if a more generalized smart cap for prescription drugs could track usage in the same manner.

gtracy 16y ago
There are some companies doing this for general prescriptions. Vitality - http://www.vitality.net/ http://www.vitality.net/ - has a wireless cap that helps track adherence. But asthma is pretty unique since the inhalers are used in "rescue" situations and there are strong geographic correlations that arise from environmental issues.
- jasonz 16y ago
  Yeah the fact that it tracks the use of inhalers is very clever. It provides a much more rich history of use to help doctors decide the best way to manage their patients. Currently medications for asthmatics are determined by a asthma severity scale (symptom frequency, night time attacks, etc) - so a more fine-grained analytics would be interesting. I would think this approach would work well if applied to other diseases where the frequency that the patient takes the medication is tied to symptoms - chest pain/nitroglycerin or acid-reflux/antacids are a couple of examples.

atomical 16y ago

I seem to recall a winner of the Twilio contest that developed a similar app for reporting symptoms. Couldn't this easily be extended to just about any condition?

johns 16y ago
Yep, we had this one win before: http://blog.twilio.com/2010/08/chris-bennett-wins-twilios-anything-goes-contest-for-as-journal.html http://blog.twilio.com/2010/08/chris-bennett-wins-twilios-an...

adityakothadiya 16y ago

Well, I thought the competition was for developers as in indie-developers and not startups! Here is what the description from contest page says - "We've partnered with Union Square Ventures, who are investors in Twilio, to give one developer the opportunity to travel to New York City to meet with Fred Wilson, Albert Wenger, and Brad Burnham." This doesn't seem to be a appropriate winner to me. Please note, I'm not demeaning Asthmapolis' value proposition. I'm just saying, probably they are better suited for TechCrunch Disrupt kind of competiion as a startup, and not developer contests!

dmor 16y ago
The theme for the contest was "Building a Business on Twilio" and the description was posted here: http://contests.twilio.com/2010/09/build-your-business-with-twilio-and-win-a-meeting-with-union-square-ventures-ends-927.html http://contests.twilio.com/2010/09/build-your-business-with-... While we can only commit to covering the travel costs for one developer, the contest was open to everyone - including existing startups. "The partners at Union Square Ventures will serve as our judges for this round, and they will select one awesome Twilio-powered company to meet with them in New York City, all expenses paid. Three runners up will each receive $250 in Twilio credit to help get their businesses off the ground."