Smartphone Sleep Sensor Maker Discusses DTC In Digital Health

I tend to shy away from direct-to-consumer digital/wireless/mobile healthcare products because I've seen so many of them fail. It's hard to make a go of it selling to a market that historically has expected someone else — usually an insurance company — to pay for everything. When I got the chance to interview someone from a DTC company that's had some early success, I jumped at it because I'm interested in learning why he chose that direction. When it comes to Beddit, a Finnish company that makes a nonintrusive sleep sensor and companion smartphone app, there is a simple answer, according to CEO and co-founder Lasse Leppakorpi. Gaining regulatory approval to sell a diagnostic or treatment device is expensive and time-consuming, so the company does not sell its sensor as a medical device, even though it has been, in his words, "clinically validated." In the U.S., Beddit is already available online for $149, and will be at Bed, Bath and Beyond stores nationwide by November. It also will soon have retail channels in Canada and much of Europe, according to Leppakorpi. In this podcast, recorded last week at the annual Health 2.0 Fall Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., we go into more depth about the DTC strategy, consumer wellness products in general and what to do with the data such devices generate. In retrospect, I wish we could have discussed integration more, because all these consumer wellness gadgets that are proliferating are potentially creating more data silos that are fairly useless to healthcare professionals. We did at one point discuss Dr. Eric Topol, author of "The Creative Destruction of Medicine," and his battle against the medical establishment. Watch this interview he did on NBC early this year if you haven't already. Podcast details: Interview with Beddit CEO Lasse Leppakorpi at Health 2.0 Conference, Sept. 22, 2014 in Santa Clara, Calif. MP3, stereo, 128 kbps, 17.2 MB. Running time 18:52. 0:45 What Beddit does and how it works