Social Networks Help The Medicine Go Down

agreed. Since I use alerts on my mobile phone, i leave my job post sharp as clock without even thinking about leaving.

Very practical indeed

I do think however that phone applications will play a significant role in monitoring health - especially for folks in their 40-50's and below who are comfortable with these gadgets. We will be able to plug in at the doctors office like we do when we take our cars into the shop.

Thanks for the article. I'm one of the cofounders of Plerts, and I'd like to take a minute to address a few points:

First, we are NOT a social network. While we offer users the ability to post to their public status, such as Facebook and Twitter, this is strictly optional and we do not require you have an account at either of these sites. Alerts can be sent privately via email and SMS to select contacts who don't even use Plerts. Also, Plerts does not require anyone monitoring you like GPS services; we emphasize privacy.

One problem with traditional GPS / sensor services is that they lack situational context. You don't know if a patient is sleeping, watching TV, having a cup of tea, or is in fact unconscious due to an adverse drug reaction. Furthermore, existing life alert services are bound to land lines and only work within a patient's home. As society shifts to mobile phones these systems become obsolete, and an impractical for seniors who want to spend their golden years traveling. My parents are 60 and neither have traditional phone lines.

Last, our free reminder feature is not correlated to our alert service. If you create a reminder for medicine and fail to complete it, nobody will receive an ER alert. Only our life services (Emergency, Pulses, and Watchdogs) are tied to the alert service. Each of these services address various use-cases based on our market research. For example, a patient who lives alone can activate a :30 minute Pulse after returning home from the doctor with prescription meds in the event something happens. Adverse drug reactions are responsible for 2M hospitalizations and 100k deaths per year in the United States alone.

For more information, please visit http://plerts.com/why/ or contact me.

We are just glad to see more people taking advantage of their mobile phones as a solution for medication management.

If you are interested in a medication reminder service from the patient perspective, try RememberItNow! We make eHealth easy.

Set and send reminders by SMS, Push, or email. RememberItNow! also makes it easy to create a personal health record and create a private care community.

Getting started is fast and free at http://www.rememberitnow.com