Tag: mobile app

Geolocation technology is bringing doctors and patients together

| August 11, 2014

A new mobile app is using location based tech to make sure that the ill can find the medical services they need.

Geolocation technology has been shown to be successful for use in mobile marketing and in specific programs such as ride sharing services, but this tech is now also branching out into health care as a location based app makes it possible for patients to use their smartphones to arrange for house calls from a physician.

The smartphone service, called Pager, is currently available only to patients living in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The intention of the service is to start spreading outward into other cities by 2015. This geolocation technology based app has only just launched in May, but is becoming quite popular among mobile device users. The tech behind the application was designed by Oscar Salazar, the co-founder of Pager, who had also previously been an engineer on the team that was behind the creation of the on demand ride share technology that is now used by Uber.

Salazar used his knowledge of geolocation technology to come up with a new service along with two other entrepreneurs.

Geolocation Technology - app for medical servicesTogether, the group of three people managed to raise $3.5 million in investment capital in order to create and launch the Pager mobile app. The marketing director at Pager explained that “We do share some of that [Uber] DNA.” He also added that through the use of this service, “Our doctors come to you. It’s on demand.”

This startup has joined a rapidly growing health care trend that has seen patients looking to try to step away from the experience of primary care clinics and hospitals, in order to receive “convenience care.” That sector involves a number of different types of service, including urgent care clinic based episodic treatments. However, many people are also starting to see the opportunity presented by care offered in a person’s own home through the use of video conferencing, email, remote health monitoring, and – through this service – actual house calls.

Patients and insurance companies, alike, have been working hard to steer health care out of emergency rooms, where the highest treatment costs are generated. With geolocation technology, this is becoming possible, even without having to call ahead to schedule appointments or sit around for ages in a waiting room.

Mobile wallet investment into LoopPay by Visa

| August 6, 2014

The credit card giant has now backed the smartphone payment solution that is accepted at most POS terminals.

It has now been announced that Visa is investing into LoopPay, which is a mobile wallet app that is designed to provide consumers and retailers with a mobile payment solution that is already accepted at a majority of point of sale terminals among retailers.

The LoopPay mobile app has been created to allow people to make mobile payments with smartphones.

This eliminates the need for those consumers to have to bring their plastic credit cards with them because they can use the mobile wallet within their device to pay with those cards in a digital manner, instead. The app uses a traditional setup for a smartphone based payments service, and provides the consumer with a small dongle that plugs into the device in order to allow users to be able to swipe their virtual cards when they reach the cash register to pay for their products at a retailer’s checkout counter.

In this way, the LoopPay mobile wallet doesn’t require any changes to be made to the retailer POS terminals.

Mobile Wallet - Visa InvestmentTo work with the LoopPay mobile payments software, retailers can simply continue to use the point of sale terminals that they already have. This helps to be able to span the gap that is currently present in the majority of smartphone based wallet services in the United States retail market.

Typically, in order for retailers to be able to receive mobile payments, they would have to change their terminals in order to accept some specific form of technology. At the same time, those that already accept certain types of smartphone friendly tech, such as NFC technology based readers, are compatible with only a small percentage of devices that are currently used by consumers.

As this service allows retailers to keep their systems and simply provides consumers with a dongle to use, this overcomes the compatibility challenges that have existed among many mobile wallet services until now. In this, Visa has already announced that it is upgrading its VisaCheckout program. Therefore, their investment into LoopPay will give the company the opportunity to make an even larger impact on the smartphone payments sector.