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Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest

blog.twilio.com

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Re: Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest

#4

Post by gtracy »

jasonz wrote: post #2

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

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

#5

Post by johns »

atomical wrote: post #3

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?

Yep, we had this one win before: http://blog.twilio.com/2010/08/chris-bennett-wins-twilios-an...

Re: Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest

#6

Post by jasonz »

gtracy wrote: post #4
jasonz wrote: post #2

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

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.

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.

Re: Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest

#7

Post by adityakothadiya »

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!

Re: Asthmapolis Wins Twilio + Union Square Ventures Contest

#8

Post by dmor »

adityakothadiya wrote: post #7

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 de…

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-...

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."

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