Hot on the heels of announcing the Priv’s availability on Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile, Blackberry also announced a partnership with Sharecare, a health and wellness engagement platform.
Sharecare was founded by Dr. Mehmet Oz and Jeff Arnold, founder of WebMD. It lets users build a Sharecare profile based on results of a RealAge test — which shows the true age of your body by gathering data about lifestyle and medical history. Users also have constant access to health consultants through AskMD, sort of like a preliminary consultation before heading to the doctor. The service also helps you find reliable doctors using a filter-based search that allows you to search based on such factors as language, experience, and hospital affiliation.
Sharecare has been developing and testing a voice-recognition feature in its app that recognizes stress levels through fractal patterns in the voice. It essentially offers real-time feedback of how you sound — whether it’s anxious or excited — as you talk into your phone. The company hopes it will be a first step for people to recognize and change behavior.
Where does Blackberry come into this? Sharecare will integrate BBM, Blackberry’s messaging service, into the Sharecare app, to essentially enable secure messaging while consumers benefit from improved self-awareness, reduced stress, and improved relationships. It can recognize these tones through text and voice calls made within the Sharecare app.
“Building on this, the companies will move to enable consumers to safely store, manage, and update their health information in one place, enable doctors and healthcare professionals to privately communicate with patients, and offer secure tele-health services,” the blog post announcement said.
Sharecare and Blackberry want to address privacy when dealing with medical information — and this integration is the first step toward improving it.
“With the accessibility mobility provides, it also comes with the increased risk of data breaches that can compromise patient information and care,” said Marty Beard, BlackBerry’s COO, in the company’s related statement. “When it comes to managing our health, it is imperative we provide secure solutions that address privacy concerns for organizations like Sharecare, in order to address one of the critical requirements for mass adoption of mobile health care solutions.”
The new update is available in the Sharecare app on iOS and Android, and the app will soon be available on Blackberry OS.
