Re:Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest
by adityakothadiya on Thursday October 21, 2010 @05:12PM
(#1817463)
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!
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."
Re:Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest
by atomical on Thursday October 21, 2010 @04:04PM
(#1817211)
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?
Re:Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest
by gtracy on Thursday October 21, 2010 @04:20PM
(#1817275)
There are some companies doing this for general prescriptions. Vitality - 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.
Re:Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest
by jasonz on Thursday October 21, 2010 @04:50PM
(#1817390)
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.
"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!
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."
But asthma is pretty unique since the inhalers are used in "rescue" situations and there are strong geographic correlations that arise from environmental issues.
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.