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Health care provider Humana is targeting the mobile health market with its first iPhone application.
Produced with Persuasive Games, the $2.99 Colorfall application is now available in the iPhone App Store and aims to keep the mind sharp. It involves fast thinking to arrange the colors of the rainbow and allows players to shoot iPhone images and incorporate them into the game.
“With Colorfall, it’s a brain game in terms of cognitive fitness,” Paul Puopolo, Humana’s director of consumer innovation, told eWEEK. “You really have to think about what you’re doing with the squares.”
Users can preview the company’s games at the Web site for its Humana Games division.
“We’re excited to be the first health insurance company to offer people fun, healthy mobile games that challenge their minds and bodies while encouraging healthy behaviors,” Puopolo, Humana’s director of consumer innovation, wrote in a statement.
Humana plans to release additional health applications for the iPhone this summer.
As Humana releases Colorfall, more and more companies are introducing health-related mobile applications.
On June 21, Emerging Healthcare Solutions (EHSI) announced a smartphone application called e-911 that sends a user’s medical information to a first responder or emergency room when 911 is dialed. The e-911 will appear first on Apple’s iPhone, followed by Google Android and Research in Motions’ BlackBerry smartphone.
“We have established a goal of selling one million, e-911 downloads in the first year after release,” Cindy Morrissey, president of EHSI, wrote in a statement. e-911 will be free on EHSI’s Website.
By providing essential information about a patients’ medical condition or medications automatically via a smartphone application, the patient will be treated faster than if verbal communication was used, according to EHSI,
Earlier in June, Walgreens announced a mobile alerts service to inform customers when their prescriptions are ready and updated its iPhone application. In March, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center announced a partnership with dbMotion to allow doctors to access information on patients’ allergies, medications and lab results on BlackBerrys.