Smartphone Physical: DreamIt startup tries to shrink medical exams to iPhone-size

Mike Batista is putting his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering on hold. The 23-year-old Johns Hopkins University student thought a $50,000 investment in a fledging startup would be worth it.
He’s one of three cofounders of The Smartphone Physical, one of nine companies now spending four months as part of the first class of the DreamIt Health Baltimore accelerator for health IT startups.
A number of medical device companies — AliveCor, iHealth, Mobisante and others — manufacture devices that can be plugged into smartphones, allowing data collected to be stored on a phone. Different devices require different apps to function. The Smartphone Physical, on the other hand, is a software platform and an app that works with a multitude of devices, negating the need for different apps while ensuring that medical information collected is also transmitted to electronic medical records, and not solely stored on a phone.
“The goal is to replace medical devices in a clinic with mobile-based tools,” said Batista during an interview at the accelerator’s office space at Bond Street Wharf in Fells Point.
While the concept for The Smartphone Physical first debuted at TEDMED in spring 2013, it wasn’t until the end of summer 2013 that Batista and his cofounders decided to build a company around the idea. The startup is now partnered with nine medical device companies, including the three mentioned in this post, in a pilot program to test the app being developed.
Batista said The Smartphone Physical is working with medical devices already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and working to align its software with HIPAA restrictions. Being in DreamIt is helping move those processes along.
“We’ve just moved forward by leaps and bounds,” he said.
As for his Ph.D. program, Batista said he would like to return to finish. But right now he’s running operations for the startup full-time, as his cofounders split time between Baltimore and Philadelphia, where one runs another startup and the other is a student at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school.