AT&T to market WellDoc mobile diabetes app

In August, WellDoc, a Baltimore-based developer of disease management technology, became one of the first companies to receive FDA approval for a mobile healthcare product, an analytics system for Type 2 diabetes. Now, WellDoc has a marketing deal with AT&T.

The telecommunications giant will test the WellDoc DiabetesManager application with some of its employees beginning next year, and AT&T has plans to offer WellDoc products to payers, self-insured corporations and disease management companies if the pilot is successful. AT&T also will provide hosting services, customer support and billing for DiabetesManager, the two companies announced.

DiabetesManager is a mobile-phone app that lets patients store and transmit readings from blood-glucose monitors and provides patients and physicians with web-based software to analyze the data. AT&T and WellDoc intend to introduce similar tools for heart disease, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and oncology, pending FDA approval.

"We believe that the use of mobile technologies and smart networks can contribute to a healthier world, and disease management is an area where mobility can facilitate improved patient outcomes and reduced healthcare costs," Dan Walsh, senior VP of marketing services for AT&T Business Solutions, says in a statement. "By embedding tools on one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous technologies, the mobile phone, we hope to quickly unlock the enormous potential of m-health."

Donald Casey, CEO of the West Wireless Health Institute, calls the deal "a landmark catalyst for the field of wireless health," according to a WellDoc-AT&T press release. "The combination of two critical value-chain elements--wireless expertise and clinical software excellence--is proof positive that the wireless healthcare space is rapidly approaching Main Street. These types of technologies have the potential to completely transform the management of our nation's chronic disease epidemic," Casey explains.

eWeek reports that AT&T will allow WellDoc products to access other wireless carriers' networks.

For more information:
- read this eWeek story
- see this AT&T/WellDoc press release