Bandwidth and mobile health innovation

Founders of HEALTHeME Sloan and Guy Rachmuth with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski  

Here at HEALTHeME, we use a lot of bandwidth to push our program out to folks that want to get healthy by using their mobile phone. The founders of HEALTHeME recently had dinner with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski during his visit to Durham, NC. The Chairman pointed out that the U.S is now in a race to ensure that innovative ideas have access to our most treasured communication resources: our mobile phone and internet connections.


We are excited that the FCC is working to ensure that the regulatory path for mobile health products, like HEALTHeME, is efficient so that more innovation can take place. Of course, we are also happy to know that someone is making sure we don’t run out of bandwidth…

Working with your doctor may help you lose weight.

Doctor visits help you lose weight.

A few recent studies found that talking with your doctor about your excess weight may help you shed those unwanted pounds.  One study found that patients were more motivated to lose weight when doctors talked with them about being overweight. Another study found that lifestyle counseling helped prevent additional weight gain in overweight patients.

This all sounds well-and-good but how many doctors actually talk to their patients about their weight? Not many. In one study, less than half of overweight people and less than two-thirds of obese people had a conversation about their weight with their physician. We know the health-related consequences of being overweight or obese can be serious, so why wouldn’t a doctor want to confront this issue head-on?

Well, there may be several reasons for the uncomfortable silence. It may be that physicians feel this is an “off-limits” topic and they don’t want to risk offending a patient. Another thought is that physicians are not trained to help people with weight loss. Whatever the reason, in many cases, the conversation just isn’t happening.

What can you do? If you have concerns about your weight, your first step is to bring it up to your doctor. Even if they aren’t comfortable helping you with your weight loss goals, they may be able to connect you to the appropriate resources. At the very least, your doctor should be able to do an assessment to determine if you are ready to begin an exercise program. Exercising even 10 minutes can boost your metabolism for up to 1 hour, which burns extra calories. Bet you can guess what that means? Yep, more calories burned means weight lost! Even losing 10% of your body weight can make a huge impact on your health.  So, talking about weight loss with your doctor makes sense for you, and your health.