Author: Ki Mae Heussner

If you’ve ever forgotten to take your medication, you’re hardly alone: according to estimates, as many as half of American fail to follow a prescribed regimen. And the consequences aren’t just harmful to the individual patients, but the health system overall. The New England Healthcare Institute reports that patients who don’t take their prescription medication cost the U.S. health care system an estimated $290 billion in avoidable medical costs each year.

Mango Health, a health startup launched by former executives from mobile gaming company ngmoco, believes that by combining game mechanics with an intuitive, fun design and useful features, they can keep patients on track. Since August, the company has been beta testing the app with a small set of users, but on Tuesday it said it had launched in the app store.

“One of the biggest challenges in this space… is long-time use, loyalty and retention – and that’s the skill we bring,” said co-founder Jason Oberfest. Over the course of a 16-week pilot, he said, Mango Health’s medication adherence app saw engagement rates that were three to four times higher than any of its best performing mobile games.

The app offers several tools, including a simple way to check for medication interactions and timed reminders to take your meds. The app’s colorful, clean design is more inviting than many health apps on the market. But the real trick to getting people to stay hooked is a reward system. Each day, users have the opportunity to earn 10 points for letting the app know that they took their medication. Over time, those points can be redeemed for perks like Target gift cards and charity donations.

The reward system also provides a way to keep the app free. Oberfest declined to share details but said the brand integrations are paid for as a form of advertising.

Several other  health startups are attempting to address the same problem with different kinds of technology. MediSafe, for example, also offers a mobile app that reminds patients to take their meds, and if they don’t indicate that they’ve done so, the app notifies a friend, family member or a caregiver. AdhereTech, which was part of health startup accelerator Blueprint Health, uses sensor-equipped pill bottles to monitor whether patients take their prescriptions. And AllazoHealth, another Blueprint company, uses demographic, behavioral and other data to help health insurers and pharmaceutical benefit managers (PBMs) predict who will stick to their regime and who won’t and then determines the most appropriate interventions.

With a successful background in gaming, Mango Health’s founders bring an interesting perspective to the health care. But, as with all new approaches to behavior change, it will be interesting to see how effective the app is over time. The company, which launched last summer, has raised $1.45 million from Floodgate Fund, First Round Capital, Steve Anderson with Baseline Ventures, Zynga co-founder and CEO Mark Pincus and Khosla Ventures’ Keith Rabois.

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Given the number of people with diabetes – 26 million in the U.S., with another third estimated to have prediabetes – it’s little wonder that more companies and startups are trying use technology to address the problem.

But a new report on computer-based support for people with diabetes finds that while digital tools can lead to some positive outcomes, the effects appear to be short-lived.

The report, published in the Cochrane Library, an independent evaluator of medical research, was based on a review of 16 trials involving nearly 3,600 people with type 2 diabetes. In each of the trials, the patients used computers or mobile phones as part of a diabetes intervention program that lasted between one and 12 months.

The interventions in the trials included online peer support and education, digitally delivered tailored advice, goal setting features and mobile-based glucose data transmissions.

The study found that the digitally supported programs led to small positive effects on blood sugar levels, with the mobile-based interventions leading to slightly more improvement, but that those effects started decreasing after six months. It also found that there didn’t appear to be significant improvements on depression, blood pressure, weight or quality of life.

“Our review shows that although popular, computer-based diabetes self-management interventions currently have limited evidence supporting their use,” lead researcher Kingshuk Pal, of the London-based University College London said in a statement. “There are also few studies looking at cost-effectiveness or long-term impact on patient health.”

Skeptics of broad studies like this one point out that because they look at a range of products of differing qualities, that can create more middle-of-the-road outcomes. Indeed, some of the more innovative digital diabetes programs, like Omada Health, Ginger.io, and Glooko, have shown some promise — for example, in a recent 230-person pilot of Omada’s diabetes prevention program, the average participant lost 13.7 pounds after 16 weeks.

But as more digital applications emerge to help patients fight and prevent diabetes and other conditions, it’s important to scrutinize their effectiveness. As this study emphasizes, real behavior change is incredibly complex, and the tools that ultimately work will be the ones that help patients figure out how their specific health changes can sustainably fit into the rest of their lives.

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Considering all the fitness apps already available — from Runkeeper and Nike+ to Fitocracy and MyFitnessPal, to name just a few — it’s hard to imagine that there’s still room for more.

But two former Microsoft product managers believe those apps cater to the more motivated fitness fiends among us. On Thursday, they rolled out Cody, a fitness app intended for everyone else.

“The way I observe the people who use existing apps today, I’d characterize them more as enthusiasts, and we hope that more and more of the mainstream will get into the space,” said co-founder Paul Javid. “[It’s the difference between] what do the enthusiasts want versus more casual consumers of fitness.”

While other fitness apps emphasize metrics — either through GPS tracking that automatically calculates the distance of a run or the number of steps taken or through manual input – Javid said that to reach casual fitness fans (those who might only exercise a couple of times a week or less) Cody is more about the “stories” behind the activity. The image-heavy app encourages users to share posts about why a given activity is important to them or what’s happening around them, as well as tag their locations and add pictures to build up their “fitness graph.”

Cody also acts as a kind of virtual coach. When users first load the app, they’re asked to identify their goals – from losing weight to building muscle tone to de-stressing. For now, the app just surfaces original content about workouts, healthy living and other topics that match up with those goals. But, ultimately, Javid said, the plan is for Cody to learn from users’ activity and recommend articles, workouts, people or places that fit their interests. In time, he added, the app could integrate with fitness tracking devices to get an even more comprehensive view of each user.

Prior to launching the app, the startup created a couple hundred pieces of original content but it soon plans to syndicate content from fitness and health site Greatist and could distribute content from other sources in the future.

When Javid and his co-founder Pejman Pour-Moezzi first left Microsoft about a year ago to focus on a startup, their plan was to build a social app that would help people accomplish their personal goals – in a manner not so unlike that of Lift, the Obvious Corp.-backed good-habit-building app.  But Javid said they soon observed that about half of the early beta users had fitness- or health-related goals, so they switched tacks to focus on those needs. To date, they’ve raised $200,000 in seed funding from Ken Irving, a member of a powerful oil family in Canada.

Given all the recent interest in digital health and quantified-self-type activity tracking tools, it’s not surprising that more entrepreneurs are hoping they can carve out opportunities with new tools. But while I think Cody’s highly visual design and clean layout could appeal to consumers who are just starting to get their feet wet in fitness, the crowded landscape could be a big challenge. While other fitness apps may not provide “coaching” and content, they’re already amassing tons of users’ fitness and health data and could, at some point, roll out data-driven recommendations as well. Also, when it comes to socializing around workouts, plenty of people already use Facebook and Twitter to share workouts, and Fitocracy already offers a dedicated social network for fitness.

Interestingly, among early beta testers, Cody’s founders have found that the app is especially popular among yoga, crossfit and bar method enthusiasts who don’t focus on metrics in the same way runners and bikers might. While the beta group has been small, it will be interesting to see if that trend continues.

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Runkeeper, one of the more popular fitness tracking apps, has already found its way on to millions of smartphones overseas. But the company is making an even bigger international push by adding support for 6 new languages.

Already two-thirds of its 17 million users are in more than 200 countries outside the U.S., the company told me Wednesday. But Runkeeper believes that there are many others who would use the app if not for the language barrier.

To date, the company has offered the app in English only, but added Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese. As of today, the changes are live for Android users and the iPhone version is comings soon, Runkeeper said.

Given rising competition among fitness tracking apps and devices — and the foothold the company already has overseas — it’s not surprising that Runkeeper wants to ramp up international outreach.

Runkeeper, which launched in 2008, has a strong user base. But Nike, for example, has said that its Nike+ community (encompassing its app and devices) includes 11 million people and MapMyFitness, another fitness tracking company, said it crossed the 10 million member mark last summer. Nike supports other languages on its app, but it appears that MapMyFitness does not (although I’ve reached out to the company to confirm).

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For most of us, sitting in the waiting room, twiddling our thumbs, is as much a part of the doctor’s visit as stepping on a scale and getting our temperature read. But, according to data released Tuesday by doctor review site Vitals, where you live can make a difference.

Nationwide, the overall average doctor wait time actually decreased slightly, from 21 minutes last year to 20 minutes and 15 seconds. But the company said the shortest average wait time increased. Last year, Wisconsin led with an average wait time of 15 minutes and 26 seconds. This year, the state with the shortest wait time is Alaska, at 16 minutes. Denver topped the list of cities with the shortest times, with a wait of 15 minutes and 25 seconds.

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If you want to share your own content, the web offers no shortage of publishing tools, from full-on blogging platform WordPress to lightweight Tumblr to mobile micro-blogging app CheckThis. But the options aren’t as plentiful when it comes to easily creating online multimedia content with a group.

Startup Padlet, which has been simultaneously enrolled in Y Combinator and ed tech accelerator Imagine K-12, has created software to fill that hole. It lets people quickly create an online “wall” for sharing any kind of content, from text to images to video, and allows them to collaborate on the creation of that content as well. It first launched as Wallwisher in 2008, but re-launched the product in October and changed its name to Padlet in January. The founders, who will be on stage Tuesday at Y Combinator’s Demo Day on Tuesday, say the site has seen 30 percent month-over-month growth for the last seven months and has had 300,000 users and 750,000 visitors in the last 30 days.

While the site has been open to anyone, co-founder Pranav Piyush said a number of teachers have been using it to post class files and encourage student collaboration. “There’s no obvious answer to what a school teacher should use that’s fun and collaborative,” he said. “We’ve set out to find the easiest way to put stuff on the Web.”

On Padlet.com, users create a “wall” with its own URL with one click. Then they can choose how public or private they want it to be and how much control they want to give others. They can add content and change the design with a drag-and-drop interface. A teacher could use it to share and collect images and video related to a history lesson or friends could use it to share memories and pictures from a recent trip. The NYC Public Advocate’s Office used Padlet to collect online tributes for the first responders to Hurricane Sandy.

Other online collaboration tools exist but they tend to provide slightly different functionality. Google Docs, for example, let people share and collaborate around documents and spreadsheets, but they tend to focus on text (you can share images and drawings but not in an integrated way). Scoot & Doodle, a new startup that recently raised funding from Pearson and others, encourages online collaboration, but via Google Hangouts and with more of a focus on real-time face-to-face communication. Dropbox is great for sharing files with a group but not really built for group content production. In education, teachers could use social platforms like Edmodo and Schoology to share content and collaborate, although those sites are intended for far more than one-off collaborative projects).

While the basic product is free, Piyush said the company is piloting premium versions for schools and corporate clients. The startup also envisions opening up the platform to third-party developers to create a paid marketplace of add-ons for further customizing with backgrounds, themes and other tools.

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Clashing robots, battle arenas set against industrial wastelands, promises of glory. At first glance, Kuato Studios’ new mobile game Hakitzu looks like any highly-produced iPad-based game a kid might play. But the company hopes it can do more than just keep kids entertained: its goal is to use sharp graphics, dramatic music and game mechanics to actually teach them how to code.

Launched Tuesday, Hakitzu is the first game from Kuato Studios, a London- and Palo Alto-based learning startup founded last year and backed by SRI International, the company behind Siri.

“We started to have a look at learning and education for the twenty-first century — what new techniques would we apply to learning, what technologies [could apply] to how kids are learning these days, “ said Frank Meehan, Kuato Studios’ founder and CEO, who formerly sat on the boards of SIRI and Spotify.

At the 25-person company, he added, he essentially “mashed up” artificial intelligence scientists, educators and game developers to produce games that have all punch of an Electronic Arts game, but the educational value of teacher-created lesson.

Hakitzu, which the company teased a bit last summer but didn’t release in its entirety until today, is meant to be the company’s showcase app, Meehan said, but future games will more deeply incorporate artificial intelligence.

Given the growing recognition that students’ skills are lagging in computer science, Kuato Studios decided to focus its first game on teaching kids to code. As a widely-circulated video released last month by Code.org emphasized, coding is a key tool for the digital age but one not enough students have mastered. Less than two percent of students study computer programming but programming jobs are growing at double the pace of other jobs, the nonprofit says.

Startups like Codecademy and Treehouse, as well as new startups Tynker and Hopscotch, which aim for a slightly younger audience, are similarly tackling the challenge of teaching programming to students.

But Hakitzu aims to provide a far more gamified experience. Players assemble and customize their robots in the Chop Shop, select their arena and then play against friends or others. The goal is to hack your opponent’s lit-up “terminal” on the opposite side of the arena. Here’s where the programming comes in: to manipulate their robots (or “Code Walkers”), they have to actually code in the commands, for example:

Move(“Forward”,3);

FireLaser();

Hack();

The game targets kids aged 11 to 16, but could likely appeal to an even wider audience. In tests in schools, Meehan said the game interested boys and girls fairly evenly (although, to me, the robo- and battle-centric graphics and language seem as if they’d be more interesting to boys).

On the engagement front, it’s easy to see how Hakitzu could capture and hold kids’ attention. But how effective is it in actually teaching them to code?  It could certainly help familiarize them with the basics of JavaScript, but typing in simple commands within the structure of a game is still a long way off from building a web site or programming an app.

Meehan said Hakitzu’s goal isn’t to impart deep coding skills, but to jumpstart their interest in the field — and it’s happy to point them to Codecademy and other sites with comprehensive programming lessons.

“We want them to get over the first hump of not knowing where to get started,” he said. “Further on down the track, what we want to do is push them off to other great coding companies.”

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Developer training company Pluralsight, which has long helped professional programmers improve their technical chops, is turning a bit of its attention to kids.

As momentum builds behind bringing computer science to younger students, Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard said his company wants to do its part for the cause. And, on Monday, the Salt Lake City-based company released a couple of free online courses teaching elementary, middle and high school kids how to code.

“We feel that the world needs to raise awareness of the importance of being more technical with computer science at an earlier age,” he said.

As a star-studded video released last month by Code.org emphasized, the country needs more technical talent. Less than two percent of students study computer programming — and 90 percent of U.S. schools don’t offer programming. Meanwhile, programming jobs are growing at double the pace of other jobs, according to the non-profit.

More startups, including Kuato Studios, Tynker and Hopscotch are beginning to take on this problem directly with games and kid-friendly programs that teach the basics of coding.

But for Pluralsight, which is a subscription-based business, the new kids’ courses represent more of a goodwill- and loyalty-building effort than a new revenue source, Skonnard said. Its first courses focus on MIT’s programming learning environment Scratch and the programming language C#, but Skonnard said it plans to grow its library of kids’ courses, and expand outreach to schools, over time.

Pluralsight partnered with the non-profit Teaching Kids Programming, led by developers Lynn Langit and Llewellyn Falco, to create the C# course and Skonnard said both new courses were designed to be more interactive and attention-based.

The company, which launched in 2004, claims more than 200,000 subscribers and, earlier this year, raised $27.5 million from Insight Venture Partners.

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Startups offer all sorts of digital health products and services but One Medical Group is using health technology to power an entire health care practice. On Friday, the company said it had raised $30 million in a Series F round that brings its total amount raised to $77 million.

Google Ventures led the round and previous investors, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Oak Investment Partners and Maverick Capital, also participated.

Founded in 2005 by MD-turned-MBA, Dr. Tom Lee, One Medical Group aims to bring “concierge”-style medicine to the masses. In addition to more personalized care and same-day visits, patients can book appointments, renew prescriptions, check lab results and see their medical records online, as well as exchange email with their doctors.

“We’re trying to make health care work and we think we can do that by building a stronger system… and using technology that lets doctors interact thoughtfully with patients to manage their health,” said Lee.

More health technology companies are beginning to provide these kinds of solutions to doctors: ZocDoc enables online appointment booking and checkins and Ringadoc supports on-demand video and phone calls with doctors. But One Medical Group provides a holistic view of what the future doctor’s office could look like.

In line with recent health care reform legislation, the company is focused on improving patient outcomes with a model that enables more face time with physicians, as well as the ability to communicate with them digitally. Helped by technology, the company says it has cut administrative support from 4 people per office to 1.5, meaning it has extra money to put towards supporting the patient-doctor relationship.  At a typical primary care office, doctors see 25 to 30 patients a day, for 5 to 7 minutes each, but One Medical Group said its doctors see 16 patients a day for an average of 20 minutes each.

Since launching, the company has relied on venture funding and declined to share information on its membership and profitability. But in addition to expanding into new markets (it now has 23 locations in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Washington, DC and Chicago), it’s beginning to explore an additional business model. To date, it has added patients directly — it accepts most insurance plans but patients pay $150 to $200 for an annual membership —  but Lee said they’re in final discussions with several employers to offer One Medical Group as a full benefit or as one of other options.

With the new funding, he said, the company will invest in new markets, improvements to its technology and relationships with employers and health plans.

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The booming mobile app economy is quickly expanding into health care — by 2017, market research firm Research2Guidance estimates the mobile health market will be worth $26 billion. But one specter hanging over the industry has been uncertainty around regulation.

In July 2011, the Food And Drug Administration issued draft guidance on the regulation of mobile apps. But since then, developers and health entrepreneurs have been waiting for the agency’s final word. In the absence of clarification, some say, the threat of intervention and uncertainty has already held innovation back.

This week, Congress held three days of hearings to explore how to regulate health apps on smartphones and tablets. Executives from technology companies like Qualcomm (QCOM) and health services giant McKesson joined economists, medical leaders and regulators to weigh in on the debate.

Ben Chodor, CEO of health app store and certification service Happtique and one of this week’s speakers, said that while the hearings and FDA testimony didn’t provide as much clarity as developers ultimately need, the hearings and the attention they generated gave the mobile growing health industry exposure to a larger audience.

“I think it moved the needle a little bit,” he said. But “the bottom line is … we still need to see the guidance.”

The industry will have to wait a bit longer for the FDA’s final decision — but this week still uncovered a few interesting details worth considering for developers and investors in mobile health. Take a look at seven below.

• The FDA has been regulating mobile medical device software for more than 10 years, said Christy Foreman, director of the Office of Device Evaluation at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. In fact, she added, the agency’s first clearance of a mobile app goes back to 1997. So far, the agency has reviewed 100 mobile medical apps, including remote blood pressure, heart rhythm and patient monitors, as well as smartphone-based ultrasounds and glucose meters.
• Some estimate that there are 40,000 health apps available globally, but during her testimony before the Committee on Energy and Commerce (video here), Foreman said the FDA focuses on a small subset of “mobile medical apps.” These are apps that meet the definition of a medical device according to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and are intended to be used as an accessory to a regulated medical device or turn a mobile platform (smartphone or tablet) into a regulated medical device. Among those apps, there are three classes of apps that vary in potential risk and regulation requirements. But, so far, the agency has only regulated the less risky class 1 and class 2 apps and has not yet seen a class 3 app.
• The FDA does not intend to regulate apps that track a person’s daily steps, enable patients to refill prescriptions, search medical references, provide electronic health record services or offer similar services. The only thing that would change the FDA’s mind, Foreman said, is if they learned of anything related to those apps that compromise patient safety.
• Despite concerns that the FDA will have trouble keeping up with technology, Foreman said the FDA receives less than 20 applications to review mobile health apps a year. Once the agency releases its final guidance, it’s very likely that number could climb, but to put it in perspective, she said that’s just 0.5 percent of the total number of medical device applications they receive each year.
• Based on its performance over the past three years, the FDA estimates that it takes them about 67 days to review a mobile medical app. That is well within the 90-day time period the FDA has to review any medical device looking for a 510(k) clearance to come to market.
• When pushed by members of Congress to share when the FDA plans to issue final guidance on regulating medical mobile apps, Foreman said it would come before Oct. 1 (the end of the government fiscal year).
• Despite rumors that smartphones and tablets could be subjected to a new 2.3 percent medical device tax, Foreman said those devices would not be regulated as medical devices and therefore not subject to the new tax.  During the week, others discussed the possibility of taxing mobile medical apps, with some saying that mobile health apps would be exempt from the tax if they were distributed through retail channels.

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If you go online to look for health information – as about a third of Americans do – chances are the information targets a general audience, not someone with your specific medical history, risk profile or needs. But if you’re looking up diabetes complications, for example, it makes a difference if you’re an older man juggling different medications or a pregnant young woman with no other health conditions.

The larger promise of personalized medicine that considers genomic data on top of medical history and clinical data is still on the verge of reality. But, in the meantime, a few companies are at least beginning to bring a new level of personalization in health care to the web.

On Thursday, Palo Alto-based HealthTap, which lets people ask anonymous questions of a network of 35,000 doctors online, released a new feature that prompts them to tag questions with relevant personal characteristics, including age, gender, prior conditions and medications. (Previously, users had the option to tag questions, but now it’s more front and center and they can add personal characteristics across more variables.) The new addition enables that particular user to receive a tailored reply and also means that, as other users searching the site add information about themselves, they’ll see the content most specific to them.

“Amazon optimizes for your taste, Facebook optimizes for your social graph. We’re doing it for your social graph,” said HealthTap cofounder and CEO Ron Gutman.

HealthTap has long offered tools that enable users to store detailed personal health information with the goal of personalizing content but, as the demise of Google Health showed, consumer personal health records are a tough nut to crack.  People don’t care enough to take the time to fill out online forms if they don’t see the reasons for using them, or they’re concerned about privacy implications. HealthTap, which is HIPAA-compliant, is trying to meet people where they are, hoping that if they can see the benefits of providing a little bit of personal information, they’ll be incentivized to provide more.

Now that the site has received provided more than half a billion answers (since launching in 2010), Gutman said it’s reached the critical mass for tagged answers to provide meaningful personalization.

Hoping to personalize digital content with data provided by personal health tracking devices, earlier this month, WebMD announced a partnership with Qualcomm Life’s 2net platform  to create a cloud-based health hub for consumers. Once users connect their tracking devices to the platform, WebMD said it would be able to aggregate data from those devices and use it customize searches so that, instead of just getting generic diabetes information, users could receive content specific to their needs. The companies haven’t yet released anything yet but say they’d roll out their first product later this year. While consumers may see value in personalized information and insights, they could also be reticent to store their data in aggregate with a company known more for content than health services.

Smaller startups are also taking a stab at personalization with sites meant to take aim at “Dr. Google.” Symcat analyzes patient-provided symptoms and personal characteristics against disease prevalence data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other public sources to provide people with likely possible diagnoses. And Meddik goes beyond symptoms to help people access online articles, general resources and answers to questions provided by people in their “health networks” (or who share their condition profiles and symptoms). On both sites, as users participate online, they develop profiles that are used to customize future content they receive.

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Three months after rolling out a product intended to help people with prediabetes reduce their risk of developing the disease, San Francisco-based Omada Health has raised $4.7 million.

The Series A round, led by U.S. Venture Partners, with participation from The Vertical Group, Founder Collective, NEA, TriplePoint Capital, Kapor Capital, and angel investors, brings the companies total amount raised to $5.5 million.

The company said the new financing will go towards supporting the commercial rollout of its flagship product Prevent, the 16-week online program for those at risk for developing diabetes. The funding will also help the company expand into new disease categories — co-founder Sean Duffy said they’re eyeing type 2 diabetes and adult weight loss.

As we noted when Omada first launched Prevent, it combines CDC-backed research, digital devices (like wireless scales), social support from peers with similar health profiles and good design to encourage necessary behavior change.

At the time, Duffy said, “Our goal is to serve as a complement to [Centers for Disease Control diabetes prevention] efforts and expand the reach to more people with fun and beautiful experiences that represent the best of the consumer web.”

Given the CDC statistic that one in three American adults have prediabetes (meaning that their blood glucose levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetic) Omada chose a worthy target with its first product, as have other startups, including Ginger.io and Glooko. But the company’s approach to disease prevention could be easily applied to other conditions.

It builds off of evidence-based research to provide an online program that includes a curriculum, online health coach and cohort support. When participants sign up for the $120 per month program, they’re placed into small groups with others with similar BMIs (body mass index), ages and locations. And as they progress through the four months and learn about diet, exercise and other healthy habits, they’re guided via the web with a a simple social networking-like interface. The company hasn’t disclosed names but said Prevent is being used within a select group of self-insured employers and providers in the United States.

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With all the multibillion-dollar college endowments out there, it’s hard to imagine that elite schools have fundraising troubles. But even though they may know how to convince many of their highest-net-worth alumni to mail in big checks every year, TechStars-backed Evertrue believes they’re still leaving plenty of financial and networking support on the table.

On Wednesday, the Boston-based company said it had raised $5.25 million from investors who apparently agree. Evertrue’s Series A round was led by Bain Capital Ventures and included existing investors like TechStars CEO David Cohen, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn and Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly. Since launching in 2010, the startup has raised $6.8 million.

Built on top of LinkedIn’s API, the company provides a Software-as-a-Service product that helps colleges and prep schools create mobile networking apps (on iOS and Android ) for their alumni. It combines career data and other information from LinkedIn with traditional databases managed by schools to help alums find others with similar personal and professional interests and schools find new benefactors.

At the top of the “donor pyramid,” Evertrue founder and president Brent Grinna said, there are a few, very wealthy individuals, and schools use CRM-style alumni tracking programs as well as traditional wining and dining to keep tabs on them. But, he added, further down the pyramid, there’s a wide band of untapped alumni who may have less money individually but comprise a big opportunity collectively.

“At the very, very top end, schools and nonprofits are doing great jobs,” said Grinna. “But in the middle of the pyramid, unless there are really significant donors, no one is doing [a similar] level of research.”

While at business school, he said, he helped plan his own alma mater’s five-year reunion and realized that even top schools like Brown used low-tech alumni-tracking methods (spreadsheets) and were sitting on reams of outdated information. That was when (partly inspired by a classmate who went on to work at LinkedIn) Grinna decided to launch Evertrue to blend LinkedIn data with whatever academic and other information colleges traditionally collect.

In addition to helping schools manage their alumni networks, the app is intended to help the alumni themselves take advantage of their networks. From the app, users can search for alums across multiple variables, including location, employer and college major. It also serves as app for organizing class reunions and other alumni events.

As college tuition rises and students find it more challenging to find jobs, more companies are trying to bring LinkedIn-like social networks to college students. CollegeFeed, launched in beta this week, gives college students a social platform for connecting with employers, and AfterCollege, a more than decade-old company, last summer added a new social layer to give students a LinkedIn of their own.

So far, more than 100 colleges and prep schools have signed on as EverTrue customers. But with the new funding, Grinna said the company plans to focus on product development and built out its team to scale its user base.

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If you’ve ever seen any of The Terminator films, you’re familiar with Skynet, the self-aware computing system at odds with humanity. But, even though a perception persists that machines can increasingly solve complex problems and process large amounts of data on their own, machine learning experts say humans still play a very important role.

Human intervention is critical at multiple layers, from choosing the algorithms to apply to feature creation to crafting the entire structure within which a machine will learn, said Scott Brave, founder and CTO of Baynote, at GigaOM’s Structure: Data conference Wednesday.

Down the road, he said, there will be more opportunities for machine-man collaboration, as data scientists observe what the machines may be learning and then add new inputs and ideas to the system.

“A lot of times we forget that even though it’s big data, the amount of data that the machine has access to pales in comparison to the amount of data we’re absorbing and have access to,” he said. “We’re building intuitions and holistic pictures in our minds and we see these connections that the machine might not even have the possibility of seeing because it doesn’t have the right data.”

Humans have a powerful role in figuring out the sources of data to give the machine and projecting their intuition, he added.

Still, Timothy Estes, founder and CEO of Digital Reasoning, pointed out that there are three key areas in which machine bests man – and, over time, they could give rise to some interesting social and cultural questions.

Humans will never be able to consume the sheer amount of data machines can process (unless it’s with some “Ray Kurzweil-style” man and machine merging), humans weren’t designed to receive thousands of inputs at once, and we’re ill-equipped to create a unified model of knowledge across that scale of information and make judgements from it, Estes said.

Recognizing that, he said, he predicts a social debate between adopting a “Google”-like model to artificial intelligence, in which the machine simply tells you what to do next, and a software model, that assumes more human agency.

“I believe we’re going to see that [debate] play out in the next decade between the software-centric model – a personal empowerment model – and a collective model,” he said. “And that’s the Skynet problem… you get a computer with intentionality that has access to data and the next thing you know you’re looking for a robot coming back from the future.”

Check out <a href=”http://gigaom.com/2013/03/20/structuredata-2013-live-coverage/“>the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 coverage here</a>, and a video embed of the session follows below:

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When it comes to shopping for prescription drugs, you likely know that generic is cheaper than brand-name. But there are other ways to save costs on pharmacy spending and, with its new tool launched Wednesday, Castlight Health hopes consumers won’t just be more cost-conscious about buying their meds but proactive when it comes to all of their medical purchases.

The San Francisco-based company, which provides employers with health cost comparison products, said its new pharmacy tool is meant to help users shop for the best prices on their prescriptions. It allows them to search across different variables, including pharmacies, mail-order, generic/brand, quantity and other factors.

According to Consumer Reports, the average American spends $708 out-of-pocket annually on pharmaceuticals, and Castlight says people make drug-related purchases three times as often as they go to the doctor — so savings on pharmacy costs aren’t insignificant. But Ethan Prater, Castlight’s vice president of product, said that while cost savings was a factor, a larger goal of the product is to encourage consumers to be more engaged when it comes to shopping for their health care services and products.

“It’s a stepping stone to broader healthcare consumerism,” he said.

Pharmaceuticals comprise just 15 percent of what employers pay in healthcare costs. But if being mindful about drug costs helps employees become more savvy about general health care costs, the savings could be meaningful to employers and employees.

As health care costs rise and employers shift to high-deductible health plans that require their employees to bear a greater share of health care costs, companies like Castlight are trying to boost transparency and bring a new wave of consumerism to health care. Castlight, which has raised $181 million in venture capital and is believed by many to be the next digital health company to go public, is a leader in this space. But other companies addressing transparency issues in healthcare include ClearCost Health, Clear Health Costs and HealthInReach.

With Castlight’s mobile app, users can search from their doctor’s office to see if a less expensive therapeutic alternative (or drug in the same class) exists for a medication recommended by a doctor. Other savings could come from mail-order sites or pill-splitting, Prater said. While not all employers support the practice of buying larger, possibly cheaper, doses of a medication and then splitting it into the prescribed amount, Prater said that for those that do, Castlight provides the option. The tool also alerts users when it spots opportunities for cost savings.

Castlight, which counts companies like ConAgra as customers, says it works with employers who collectively cover 3.7 million people.

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The humble business of tutoring is getting an upgrade for the digital age. In the last year, much attention has been given to startups bringing instruction to mass audiences — and for good reason: massive open online courses (MOOCs) have the potential to remake what it means to get a college education. But several startups are starting to find success with the opposite approach — using the web to teach one student at a time.

And it’s not an insignificant market. Market research firm Global Industry Analysts, Inc. projects that the global private tutoring market will surpass $102.8 billion by 2018. No wonder online tutoring sites, which use video chats, web-based messaging, online whiteboards and other services, are attracting the interest of investors like Sequoia Capital and SV Angel and Internet companies like IAC.

As more educational instruction and content moves online, and the lifelong learning movement picks up, it’s only natural that the web will increasingly become a vehicle for finding and/or receiving one-on-one instruction. And the rise of mass online classes that provide little individual support could help drive the need for individual instruction. While most tutoring startups serve students at traditional high schools and universities, Alison Johnston, co-founder of InstaEDU, an on-demand tutoring service backed by the Social+Capital Partnership, said 10 to 15 percent of their online lessons are for “non-traditional” students.

“There’s a great opportunity for online tutoring to step in and provide virtual [teaching assistants] for the web,” she said.

Some startups offer tutoring sessions exclusively offline, while others provide on-demand services online only and still others take hybrid and non-traditional approaches to one-on-one instruction.  Here are 5 companies worth following:

InstaEDU

With almost 2,000 screened tutors from the country’s top colleges, InstaEDU provides 24/7 on-demand tutoring sessions that can last as little as 10 minutes or as long as 4 hours. This week, the startup launched a searchable marketplace for its tutors, so students can find tutors by interest, location or gender. While most other online tutoring services automatically match tutors with students, Johnston said InstaEDU wanted to give users the opportunity to select their tutor because they believe students learn better from teachers they like. Pricing is subscription-based, with the cost is determined by how much time students want to spend on the site. The startup, which has raised $1.1 million from The Social+Capital Partnership, said it’s talking with MOOC providers about partnering to provide teaching assistants for online classes.

StudyEdge

StudyEdge may provide extra study help, but they don’t use the T-word around their students. “Every student we’ve spoken to thinks there’s a stigma attached to the word ‘tutor’ – [that] it’s only for the rich or the dumb,” said cofounder Ethan Fieldman. “We think of them as personal trainers.” The Y Combinator graduate, based in Gainesville, Fla., takes a very different approach to tutoring. Instead of matching tutors anywhere with students anywhere, it targets students at specific schools with supplemental online videos, as well as online and live support, tailored to courses at that school. Students at the University of Florida, for example, can purchase a membership (which starts at $25/month) to access offline review sessions, exam review and concept explanation videos on Facebook and mobile apps, online and offline individual help and online peer support.  All of the content, Fieldman said, is created specifically to match the courses delivered at that school. Before StudyEdge, Fieldman said, he built a successful offline tutoring business based on tutoring strategies used to help star athletes at the University of Florida.

Tutorspree

Another Y Combinator-backed startup, Tutorspree doesn’t conduct tutoring online but lets students pair up with one of its 7,000 nationwide tutors on the web. Launched in 2011, the company provides a marketplace of pre-screened tutors searchable by location and subject area expertise and then lets students book appointments and pay online. Prices depend on location, subject and the length of the session but the company says its top tutors make $1,000 to $2,000 a month. The company has raised $2.8 million from investors including SV Angel, Sequoia Capital and Lerer Ventures.

Course Hero

Since launching in 2008, Course Hero has focused on building a hub of digital study guides, lecture notes and practice problems for college students. Last month, the company expanded into an online tutoring with a Q&A platform that lets students pay for on-demand answers to homework and study questions. In an almost TaskRabbit-like way, students submit their questions, as well as a suggested price, and then tutors can choose to answer them. Unlike other tutoring platforms, Course Hero supports less direct interaction between tutors and students and could make it a little easier for students to cheat – they could just pay for answers to homework questions without really learning the underlying concept. But for students stuck with a last-minute question, it provides a lightweight option for help.

Tutor.com

I’m cheating here a little bit because Tutor.com isn’t a startup at all — the company was launched way back in the late 1990s. But earlier this year, it was purchased by Internet giant IAC, which could make it an interesting site to watch. The company provides a network of about 2,500 online tutors through consumer subscriptions and partnerships with libraries, school districts, the military and colleges. Given its background with sites like Match.com and CollegeHumor, it will be interesting to see how IAC uses its internet chops to upgrade the product and enhance distribution.

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If you want to learn how to create an infographic, build your own website, make heads or tails out of an Excel spreadsheet or accomplish any other software-related goal, you can head to lynda.com, Udemy, Codecademy or any of a growing list of online learning sites. But publishing giant Wiley believes there’s still room for competition and on Tuesday took the wraps off of its own Digital Classroom.

Launched in partnership with the American Graphics Institute, the new site provides a marketplace of video tutorials and digital books for learning about creative software, web design and development and office applications. Video tutorials range from newbie-level instructions on how to play music and video on your iPhone to more advanced lessons on using CSS with Dreamweaver.

Like competitors in the space, Digital Classroom targets individuals looking for professional advancement, as well as personal enrichment, and it is looking to snare enterprise clients. Wiley’s move into this space underscores the opportunity companies see in helping individuals and corporations acquire new skills needed to compete in a rapidly changing economy.

Even though other companies already provide software training courses online, Barry Pruett, vice president and executive publisher for Wiley Professional Development, said they believe they can compete on price ($20 a month or $10 a month with an annual subscription, compared to lynda.com’s starting price of $25 a month) and customization.  Enterprise clients can create their own sites that include the content most appropriate for their employees (potentially including content beyond software training). And college professors can create private groups for their classes, integrate Wiley content with other course content on their university site and track student progress, he said.

Even though the site offers competitive pricing and flexible content integration options, the initial content itself didn’t seem as engaging to me as that found on Udemy and lynda.com. From a quick tour through the site, it seemed as though most of the video content included screenshots of the software and audio narration. Much of the content on Udemy and lynda.com, however, puts an expert instructor front and center and alternates video of the software with video of a person talking and other shots for a more interesting experience.  But Pruett said future videos could offer more engaging formats and he emphasized that this is just the first version of the site.

Wiley has a 200-year history and other verticals beyond software training that it could add to Digital Classroom but, for now, its library of 46 courses, 50 digital books and 3,000 videos is dwarfed by lynda.com’s nearly 1.700 courses.

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Sports giant Nike has picked its winners. Three months after announcing the launch of a new TechStars-powered accelerator for digital fitness startups, the company on Monday said it had chosen the 10 companies that will participate in its first class.

Nike said the 10 startups, which were culled from “thousands,” kicked off the program today in Portland, Ore. and will focus on building their products on top of the Nike+ and NikeFuel platforms.

During the program, the startups will be mentored by health and tech leaders, including Stefan Olander, Nike’s VP of digital sport; David Cohen, founder and CEO of TechStars; Naveen Selvadurai, co-founder of Foursquare; and quantified-self expert Tim Ferriss. In addition to the mentorship, support and work space, they’ll receive $20,000 each.

Given the rising interest in quantified self-type fitness and health tracking devices and apps (like Nike’s own Fuel band), it’s little wonder that the company spots an opportunity in supporting health startups and encouraging new ideas and applications of its platform.

“We are excited by the response to the Nike+ Accelerator and the high caliber of applicants to the program,” Olander said in a statement. “We recently celebrated the first year of NikeFuel and the Accelerator program is a natural next step to broaden and enhance the Nike+ ecosystem – allowing Nike to offer richer experiences to athletes of all levels.”

Here are the 10 companies:

• FitDeck: Digital decks of exercise playing cards that deliver ever-changing workouts for fitness and sports.
• GoRecess: Helps users find, book and review fitness activities.
• Chroma Games: An indie game studio that creates virtual worlds tied to real-world activity.
• CoachBase: Provides a digital sports coaching platform.
• GoFitCause: Leverages fitness data as a means of raising money for charities.
• HighFive: Ad network for health and fitness apps that helps people achieve their goals by rewarding them along their journey.
• Sprout At Work: Provider of corporate wellness solutions leveraging social and gamification tools to inspire employees and empower employers.
• GeoPalz: An interactive gaming and rewards platform for kids and families.
• Incomparable Things: Creates activity-driven fantasy sports leagues.
• RecBob: Offers a platform that makes recreational sports easy by organizing play.

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Are massive open online classes (MOOCs) from the likes of Coursera, Udacity and edX living up to the hype?

Even though many in academia have expressed skepticism, a survey from the Chronicle of Higher Education finds that the professors behind the MOOCs have many positive things to say about the new classes. But, interestingly, these most enthusiastic academics say that while they’re embracing MOOCs, they don’t necessarily believe they should be worth credit from their institutions.

According to the Chronicle, while 79 percent of respondents said they believed that MOOCs are “worth the hype,”  just 28 percent believed that students who succeeded in their MOOC deserve formal credit from their home institution. The survey, which attempted to reach every professor who has ever taught a MOOC, ultimately included responses from 103 professors (out of 184).

The generally positive response to the Chronicle’s survey contrasts with a 2012 survey from the Babson Survey Research Group, which found that just about 30 percent of university chief academic officers believe their faculty accept the value of online learning. The Chronicle acknowledged that the survey isn’t scientific and that the most pro-MOOC academics may have been the ones to reply. But it still provides an interesting window into the developing and nuanced attitudes of the first professors willing to try their hand at the emerging medium of instruction.

Another interesting finding was that while 86 percent of professors believed that MOOCs could eventually reduce the cost of attaining a college degree in general (45 percent said it would significantly reduce the cost; 41 percent said it would marginally reduce the cost), just 64 percent MOOCs believed they would reduce the cost of a degree at their own institution. That response likely reflects the caliber of the schools the professors represent (the big MOOC providers have made a point of partnering with Ivy League and other top tier schools) and I wonder if it indicates a belief among these professors that MOOC credits will count the most at lower-tier schools.

You can check out all of the results on the Chronicle’s website but a few other findings of note include:

• 66 percent of surveyed professors don’t believe their home institution will eventually grant formal credit to students who succeed in their MOOCs
• 15 percent of respondents said they taught a MOOC at the request of a superior (meaning that these were eager and willing participants)
• 73 percent said they hoped MOOCs could increase their visibility among colleagues, media and general public

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