Revolutionary “mRx™” program will enable physicians to prescribe mHealth apps to patients  

May 9, 2012

NEW YORK, NY – Happtique, Inc., a mobile health application store and app management solution for providers, physicians, and the patients they serve, will launch a trial of mRx™, the first program to enable physicians to prescribe mHealth apps to patients. Grounded in the belief that increased physician-to-patient services will improve compliance and health outcomes, Happtique’s patent-pending technology will enable doctors across all specialties to prescribe apps to patients.

For the program trial, Happtique is recruiting physician prescribers specializing in the treatment of heart disease, diabetes, and musculoskeletal conditions, as well as physical therapists and trainers to test the technology with health and fitness apps. Participating prescribers will receive training and access to a subset of specialty-specific apps, enabling them to integrate appropriate apps into their patients’ treatment programs. Following the training, Happtique will track both prescribing processes and patient mRx™ downloads through early summer.

To build the trial prescribing catalog, Happtique will select 5-10 apps, both connected and non-connected, in each of the designated categories on both Android and iOS platforms. Once the trial apps have been selected, participating physicians and trainers will begin prescribing the apps, depending on individual patient needs.

“Mobile app prescribing will add an entirely new dimension to my ability to care for patients,” said Steven Magid, M.D. of New York-based Hospital for Special Surgery. “In this increasingly connected and mobile world, the use of Happtique’s mRx™ will improve doctor-patient communication, patient engagement, compliance, and ultimately patients’ health.”

“App prescribing will enhance the provider/patient connection and facilitate healthy behavior changes, potentially reducing costs for providers, payers, and patients,” said Happtique CEO Ben Chodor. “mRx™ is the next evolutionary step in the field, and we are confident the provider community will agree and embrace app prescribing as a way to better engage patients in their own health and improve clinical outcomes.”

ABOUT HAPPTIQUE

Happtique is a mobile health application store and app management solution that helps healthcare providers, physicians, and patients easily integrate mHealth into treatment. It offers medical enterprises—like hospitals, continuing care facilities, and physician practices—the ability to create individually branded, secure, multi-platform application stores for staff and patient use. Happtique is a subsidiary of GNYHA Ventures, Inc., the business arm of the Greater New York Hospital Association.

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Media Contact:
Leslie Chasky
Sunshine Sachs
chasky@sunshinesachs.com / (212) 691-2800

January 18, 2012

New York, NY – Happtique, Inc., the first total mobile solution for healthcare, has named Ben Chodor as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He will lead Happtique’s mission to give healthcare enterprises—like hospitals, continuing care facilities, and physician practices—secure, individually branded, multi-platform application stores that support employee and patient mobile technology use.

Chodor brings 25 years of healthcare, pharmaceutical, technology, and start-up experience to Happtique, most recently as Sr. Vice President of Global Streaming & Virtual Events at InterCall. In 2004 he founded Stream57, a video streaming firm he successfully grew and sold in 2010 to InterCall, the world’s largest business conferencing provider. Prior to launching Stream57 he produced videos and executed live events for a variety of clients and was instrumental in developing the Patient Locator system for the City of New York, which tracked patients at hospitals in the wake of the September 11 tragedy.

“Mobile health is the future of healthcare, and Happtique has positioned itself as a true game-changer in the effort to connect providers, patients, and technology,” said Chodor. “Happtique’s comprehensive mHealth approach, from curation to certification to deployment, inspired me to join the team and help take Happtique to the next level.”

“Ben’s entire career has positioned him to successfully guide Happtique’s continued evolution and growth,” said Happtique President Corey Ackerman. “We welcome his vast industry knowledge and vision.”

“I have had the pleasure of working with Ben over the years and seeing firsthand his technology, development, and innovation skills,” said Happtique founder and Managing Director Lee H. Perlman. His leadership and expertise will bring tremendous value to Happtique and the entire mobile health community.”

About Happtique:

Happtique is the first total mobile solution developed by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals. Happtique offers healthcare enterprises—like hospitals, continuing care facilities, and physician practices—the ability to create individually branded, secure, multi-platform app stores that support employee and patient mobile technology use. Happtique is a subsidiary of GNYHA Ventures, Inc., the business arm of the Greater New York Hospital Association.

January 11, 2012

New York, NY – Happtique, Inc. announced today that it has established a multi-disciplinary Blue Ribbon Panel to guide the development of a certification program that Happtique will offer to evaluate and certify mobile healthcare apps for professionals and patients. The certification program will specify quality and performance standards that focus on an app’s clinical appropriateness and technical functionality. Happtique’s Blue Ribbon Panel is charged with formulating both the quality and performance standards as well as the certification program’s operational procedures. The Panel is expected to complete the development of the certification program in approximately six months. The voluntary program will be open to all app developers and will be funded by developer application fees.

Happtique’s Certification Program Blue Ribbon Panel will be chaired by Howard J. Luks, M.D., M.S. Dr. Luks is a Board-Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and Associate Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at New York Medical College (Valhalla, NY), and also serves as the Chief Of Sports Medicine And Arthroscopy at University Orthopedics, PC and Westchester Medical Center, where he trains Orthopedic Surgeons. Dr. Luks is very active in the intersection of social media and healthcare and is often interviewed by media outlets and invited to lecture at many Healthcare and social media events and meetings. He was recently elected to the Advisory Board of the Mayo Clinic’s Social Media Network.

Other panel members are:

Franklin A. Shaffer, EdD., RN, FAAN. Dr. Shaffer is the Chief Executive Officer of CGFNS International, the certification organization for graduates of foreign nursing schools and largest global credentialing organization for nursing and allied healthcare personnel authorized by the Federal government. Prior to joining CGFNS International last June, Dr. Shaffer was Executive Vice President of Cross Country Healthcare and Chief Nursing Officer for Cross Country Staffing. He is a member of the Nursing Advisory Council for the Joint Commission, the national accrediting body for healthcare organizations, and has held key positions with the National League for Nursing, the accrediting organization for nursing schools. Dr. Shaffer has held faculty positions at Teachers College Columbia University as well as several other leading academic institutions. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.

Shuvo Roy, Ph.D. is a leading biomedical scientist and technologist who specializes in medical applications of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology in such areas as minimally invasive surgical tools, wireless physiological monitors, and portable diagnostics.  Currently, Dr. Roy serves as Director of the Biomedical Microdevices Laboratory and Associate Professor, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco.  Previously, he was at Cleveland Clinic where he served as Co-Director of the BioMEMS Laboratory and on the faculty of the Spine Research Laboratory.  Dr. Roy has also held faculty positions in the Applied Biomedical Engineering Program at Cleveland State University and in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Department of Molecular Medicine at Case Western Reserve University.

Dave deBronkart, widely known as e-Patient Dave, is a cancer patient and blogger who has become a noted activist for healthcare transformation through participatory medicine and personal health data rights. Diagnosed in 2007 with Stage IV kidney cancer, with a median survival of just 24 weeks, he used the internet in every way to partner with his care team and beat this unbeatable disease. Today he is well and is the leading spokesman for patient engagement, attending over 150 conferences and policy meetings internationally in the past two years. He serves as volunteer co-chair of the Society for Participatory Medicine, and on the advisory boards of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, Webicina, and Rheumatoid Patient Foundation. He has appeared in Time, US News, Wired, MIT Technology Review, The British Medical Journal, and in 2009 HealthLeaders magazine named him to its “20 People Who Make Health Care Better.”

In announcing this certification initiative, Happtique President Corey Ackerman said, “With more than 20,000 healthcare apps in the marketplace – and more coming out every day –healthcare organizations and professionals are expressing the need for a bona fide mhealth app certification program.  We are very pleased that these distinguished individuals have agreed to serve on our Blue Ribbon Panel to oversee the development of our certification program. Collectively, they bring a multi-disciplinary perspective along with clinical backgrounds and critical expertise in social media, mhealth technology, healthcare accreditation and certification programs, and patient engagement.  Drawing upon our Panel members’ expertise and applying principles from the healthcare industry’s well-established protocols for accreditation and certification, we are confident that Happtique will develop a certification program that addresses the industry’s growing need in this area.”

Organizations that are interested in collaborating on the development of standards for apps of specific interest to them (e.g., clinical specialty societies and national health care associations) should contact Corey Ackerman, President, at (212) 259-0715 or email ackerman@happtique.com.

About Happtique:

Happtique is the first mobile application store developed by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals. Happtique offers healthcare enterprises—like hospitals, continuing care facilities, and physician practices—the ability to create individually branded, secure, multi-platform app stores that support employee and patient mobile technology use. Happtique is a subsidiary of GNYHA Ventures, Inc., the business arm of the Greater New York Hospital Association.

October 19, 2011

Today, HealthSaaS, a leader in the Health 2.0 movement, and Happtique, Inc., the leader in application stores for hospitals and other healthcare organizations, announced an alliance to create a custom app catalog of mobile health applications that will connect patients through their mobile phones and tablets to their healthcare organizations and ultimately to their physicians via a secure network and framework.

The new connected health app catalog will offer a suite of mobile apps for both patients and physicians which enables patients to perform remote self-monitoring of their health.  The HealthSaaS Connected Outcomes Framework will capture physician-requested data collected by patients on their mobile devices onto a secured, white-labeled provider portal and optionally into backend Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs).  This platform-agnostic solution will bring patient data into the heart of clinical practice information flow where it can have a profound and positive impact on outcomes.  HealthSaaS will provide the custom connected apps while Happtique will provide the means for healthcare providers to manage and control the deployment of the apps to their patients.

Frank Ille, CEO, of HealthSaaS said. “We are excited to announce this innovative alliance with Happtique because of the impact that it can make on our healthcare system, “By using our HealthSaaS Connected Outcomes Framework, it is easy to pass patient collected data to any EHR system.  Its use enables clinicians to be more proactive in the monitoring of treatment regimens while improving patient outcomes and lowering costs.”

Corey Ackerman, President, Happtique said “We are thrilled to be working with HealthSaaS to offer custom, connected mobile applications to our healthcare enterprise customers.  Solutions like these represent the holy grail of health apps, and Happtique is excited to help providers manage their deployment.”

HealthSaaS is currently arranging trials for the use of the new technology with selected hospitals, and practices.

About HealthSaaS
HealthSaaS (HSI) is leading the Health 2.0 movement by creating cloud based health information technology solutions.  Our patent pending Connected Outcomes Framework can aggregate disparate data from many sources including mHealth applications, cloud based services, Telehealth solutions and connected medical devices.  The framework removes silo barriers and makes data available to clinician practices, provider networks, payers self funded employers and EHR systems.

About Happtique
Happtique, powered by AppCentral^TM, is the first mobile application store developed by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals. Happtique offers healthcare enterprises—like hospitals, continuing care facilities, and physician practices—the ability to create individually branded, secure, multi-platform app stores that support employee and patient mobile technology use. Happtique is a subsidiary of GNYHA Ventures, Inc., the business arm of the Greater New York Hospital Association.

September 29, 2011

Mount Sinai, NYU Langone and Beth Israel among Eleven “Beta” Organizations to Utilize Platform and Provide Mobile Healthcare Apps to Staff

Happtique, the first mobile app store developed by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals, today announced that eleven top-tier healthcare organizations will use and test the Happtique custom app store solution. Happtique offers healthcare enterprises—like hospitals, continuing care facilities, and physician practices—the ability to create individually branded, secure, multi-platform app stores that support employee and patient mobile technology use.

In other stores, apps are generally categorized into “medical” or “health,” generating hundreds of pages of apps. Happtique has assigned each app to at least one major audience (e.g., physician, nurse, pharmacist, etc.) and at least one broad topic (e.g., heart/cardiovascular). Happtique’s Expert Classification Team, which includes a medical librarian, a physician, and a registered nurse, is responsible for the development and continuous refinement of the Happtique app cataloging system.

The Happtique solution will allow the organizations to manage and provide mobile applications to their staff in a private and secure manner. Happtique has organized its launch as a short beta program and is providing each institution with its own branded, private mobile app store.

The participating organizations include Mount Sinai Hospital (New York, NY), Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Maimonides Medical Center (Brooklyn, NY), NYU Langone Medical Center (New York, NY), NYU School of Medicine, Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehabilitation (New Hyde Park, NY), Beth Israel Medical Center (New York, NY), St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center (New York, NY), Wyckoff Heights Medical Center (Brooklyn, NY), The HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley (Kingston, NY), and d4 (United Kingdom).

These institutions have either developed or will develop their own mobile applications and will use their new app stores on Happtique to provide those applications, and others, to their staff. The initial focus will be on Apple and Android platforms with support for Blackberry to follow.

“Innovative technologies such as this are important to help ensure that providers have the most effective mobile tools to aid in the quick delivery of accurate medical applications,” said Nader Mherabi, Senior Vice President, Vice Dean and Chief Information Officer of NYU Langone Medical Center. “We are pleased to join our peers as part of this beta program.”

The beta period will last for approximately eight weeks, at which time Happtique will offer its solution to additional interested healthcare organizations. Healthcare organizations interested in participating in the post-beta release should contact Happtique through its Web site.

“We are very excited to address the need for secure and customizable healthcare app platforms by providing these hospitals, medical schools and nursing homes with their own app store,” said Happtique President, Corey Ackerman. “We will use this short beta period to gain valuable feedback and better understand their specific mHealth needs.”

The participating institutions will be able to leverage this curated medical catalog, use it to create more refined catalogs of apps for their own purposes, and have input into how Happtique refines its catalogs in the future.

December 14, 2010

London, UK and New York, NY, USA – d4, the UK non-profit organization committed to helping physicians achieve productivity though mobile computing, and US-based Happtique, the first mobile app store designed specifically to meet the needs of healthcare professionals, have signed a letter of intent that will bring d4.Happtique-an extended version of Happtique-to the UK.

The UK health market is crying out for innovation in technology, quite simply to put power in the hands of professionals. d4.Happtique will make it easier for UK health professionals to discover and use healthcare apps, bringing healthcare leaders, mobile industry innovators, application developers, content providers, and end users together to improve information flow. The co-branded d4.Happtique app store will be intuitive and easy to use. Healthcare professionals will access the store via the Web or through the d4.Happtique app installed on a smart phone or connected mobile device. Within d4.Happtique, users can access an extensive, carefully curated and well organized catalogue of healthcare and medical-related mobile apps. d4 is already in discussions with developers to allow d4 members to receive discounts on select premium apps through bulk purchasing agreements.

d4.Happtique’s operations will be launched in phases beginning in January, with the fully operational, multi-level, multi-device store available by mid-2011. d4 has begun identifying UK-specific healthcare mobile apps for the Happtique environment and encourages UK developers and publishers interested in selling their apps through the d4.Happtique store to contact d4 for details. UK health care professionals interested in becoming d4 members can pre-register online at my.d4.org.uk “We’re thrilled that d4 is working with us to extend Happtique’s presence to the UK,” said Corey Ackerman, President of Happtique. “d4′s mission of improving patient care by placing modern technology in the hands of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals is very similar to our own. By working together, d4 gains access to our innovative solutions giving everyone greater purchasing power. We’re excited to be working with d4 to improve the quality of health care while also lowering costs through this cross-Atlantic cooperation.” “Teaming up with Happtique is a big win for UK health professionals,” said James Sherwin-Smith, CEO of d4. “Healthcare professionals will be able to use their mobile devices to improve patient care while raising their own productivity. The Happtique store allows healthcare professionals to find and download the apps that will help them do their jobs better. We will deliver meaningful benefits to UK healthcare professionals that will improve patient care, safety and outcomes.”

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November 8, 2010

New York, NY – Corey Ackerman has been named President of Happtique, Inc., the first mobile application store designed specifically for healthcare professionals. Happtique will provide a vast array of mobile health apps for executives, doctors, nurses and other medical professionals and make it easier for them to discover and use healthcare apps.

As President, Corey will oversee all aspects of Happtique’s development.

Corey will continue in his role as Vice President and Associate General Counsel of GNYHA Ventures – Happtique’s parent company – where he has provided legal assistance since 2002. Prior to joining GNYHA Ventures, Corey was an associate at the New York office of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C., where he worked on corporate and securities matters. Corey earned his BS from Cornell University and his law degree, cum laude, from St. John’s University School of Law, where he was Associate Editor of the St. John’s Law Review.

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October 13, 2010

New York, NY – GNYHA Ventures, Inc., the business subsidiary of the Greater New York Hospital Association, today announced the creation of Happtique, the first mobile application (“mobile app”) store designed specifically to meet the needs of healthcare professionals.

Created by healthcare professionals, Happtique will provide a vast array of mobile apps for executives, doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. Happtique will bring healthcare leaders, mobile industry innovators, application developers, content providers, and end users together to improve information flow and make it easier for healthcare professionals to discover and use healthcare apps.

Happtique’s app store will be intuitive and easy to use. Healthcare professionals will access Happtique via the Web or through the Happtique app installed on a smart phone or connected mobile device. Within Happtique, users can access an extensive, carefully curated and well organized catalog of healthcare and medical-related mobile apps.

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