Google buys Indian-origin professor's health monitoring startup
Google has acquired Senosis Health, a Seattle-based health monitoring startup founded by University of Washington Professor Shwetak Patel, reported IANS.
The startup turns smartphones into medical devices and collects various health stats. Using functions on a smartphone including its accelerometer, microphone, flash, and camera, the Senosis app can monitor lung health and haemoglobin counts, among other things, the report said. For example, to measure haemoglobin, the app uses the phone's flash to illuminate a user's finger.
Speaking about the idea to Geekwire, Shwetak said,
Those sensors that are already on the mobile phone can be repurposed in interesting new ways, where you can actually use those for diagnosing certain kinds of diseases.
Shwetak's past startup ventures have landed in the hands of companies such as Belkin International and Sears, according to Geekwire, which first reported the acquisition on Sunday. Shwetak founded the company with four others including Dr Jim Stout, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Washington; Dr Margaret Rosenfeld, an attending physician at Seattle Childrens' Hospital and Professor in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine; Dr Jim Taylor of the University of Washington; and Mike Clarke, former associate director at the University of Washington’s technology transfer office.
According to a biography on the University of Washington website, Shwetak was a founder of Zensi, Inc., a demand-side energy monitoring solutions provider that was acquired by Belkin, Inc in 2010. He is also a co-founder of a low-power wireless sensor platform company called SNUPI Technologies and a consumer home sensing product called WallyHome. WallyHome was acquired by Sears in 2015.
With inputs from IANS.
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