Mobile Phones

Mobile Healthcare's LifeWatcher

James Nakagawa just wanted to help a pal. Back in 2001, the then-37-year-old Canadian got a call from a friend who had been hospitalized for a heart attack and needed quadruple bypass surgery. The man, a Japanese oil industry executive in his mid-50s, was told he had diabetes and that he would have to avoid foods high in fat or sugar. But he had never thought about nutrition. How would he know if the food he had at restaurants, convenience stores, and cafes fit his restricted diet? The man's frustrations became the germ of Nakagawa's idea for LifeWatcher. His Tokyo company, Mobile Healthcare, launched tests in Japan two years ago. The service lets patients use their mobile phones to keep track of everything they eat. Patients use the camera in their mobile phones to snap photos of their meals and snacks, and post them to LifeWatcher's Web site.

The site asks them about weight, blood-pressure, exercise habits, and glucose levels, and then mines a database of 7,000 foods to calculate the nutritional value of a meal. Patients who are consuming food heavy in carbohydrates, salt, fat, or sugar are warned to alter their eating habits. A nutritional coach or doctor can also sift through the photos, data, and graphs for real-time monitoring of the patient's health. Last September, Mobile Healthcare signed a deal in the U.S. with the Independent Physicians Association of America (TIPAAA), and later this year the company will start clinical trials at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington.