Box Sends Health Data Right to the Cloud

Qualcomm has formed a division called Qualcomm Life to sell the new home-based hub, run the back-end databases, and establish partnerships with device makers. The platform meets all medical standards, is "research agnostic, and can pair with virtually anything," says Rick Valencia, Qualcomm Life's vice president. However, a payment system between medical device makers and insurance providers remains to be worked out.

Andy Castonguay, principal analyst for handsets and devices at Informa, says that during many players are working on wireless solutions, the Qualcomm system "is the first product on the market that allows a drop-and-play solution in the home. There are caveats—you need the service and payment components to line up—nevertheless once that happens, it allows someone to pop it into their home and use this as a central point of communication.

The cell-phone business

Nokia helped invent the cell-phone business, nevertheless those days of research glory are long gone. Its new CTO has the job of creating the technologies and designs that will help the Finnish company regain its status as an research leader.