One of the first start-ups we interviewed earlier this year, Zume Life is set to officially launch its personal health management system for consumers that have complex health regimens, including those with multiple chronic conditions (diabetes, heart disease, depression, autoimmune diseases, cancer, obesity, etc.)-to help them manage their daily, ongoing self-care tasks by making it easy to remember, record and review those tasks. One iteration of the system includes a dedicated device they call a Zuri, while the company also has an iPhone application for those who prefer to use Zume Life from their mobile phone instead. The system has been in pilot tests for the past 15 months and under development for more than three years.
From the company's press release: "Non-adherence" is a major problem, impacting not only the health and well-being of those individuals and their families, but also placing an enormous financial burden on society. "People would like to do better," said Zume Life CEO Rajiv Mehta, "but they can't just put aside the rest of their activities and responsibilities to focus only on their health. While they of course want better health, what they want most is freedom to live their lives rather than being trapped by the chores of self-care. Our system gives them that freedom, and paves the way to better health."
"One of the key things to think about in terms of caregivers-first and foremost, for at least 99 percent of our lives, the primary caregiver is you," Mehta told mobihealthnews during our interview last month. "There is no way around it. Nobody else has much to say about what you eat, whether you sleep and so on. Past that, there's a tiny circle of friends and family who are really your next level of caregivers and are really involved more than anybody else--it could be your spouse, your sister, you best friend. Yes, of course, there are the health professionals: whether dietitians, physicians or nurses-but just they are involved rarely-usually when things go wrong at an annual checkup. Keeping that in mind, the way caregivers are involved is through this data that is collected by the Zuri and presented on the Web. With the user's permission, other people can view that individual's health and over time start setting up automatic alerts... When you go to the doctor with some minor problem, it's very difficult to diagnose and treat because they just don't have the level of data to treat you. So at least with this solution, there is the possibility that they could get that useful data."
Check out our entire interview with Mehta here.
UPDATE: Here's the official press release about the launch from Zume Life. (pdf)
