SAN FRANCISCO — Aetna, one of the largest health insurance providers in the world, is changing the way it thinks about itself.

Last year, chief executive Mark Bertolini said Aetna was no longer in the insurance business, it is in the information business.

Now, the company is turning into a fitness app maker too. Next month, Aetna will launch an iPhone app and website for managing your fitness, encouraging you to eat and live in a more healthy way, and monitoring your personal health information.

If you’re an Aetna customer, the app, called CarePass, will integrate your personal medical records with data from popular fitness-tracking devices like Withings Wi-Fi-enabled scales, Fitbit’s Flex wristband, and Jawbone’s Up wristband, as well as apps like MapMyFitness. If you’re an Aetna customer, it’ll be accessible through the same sign-on you use with Aetna’s web portal, Aetna Navigator. But you can use it to integrate data from various sources even if you aren’t an Aetna customer.

“We want a consumer to be able to see the information they care about from a healthcare perspective,” said Aetna’s head of business development, Dan Conroy (pictured above), who gave a sneak peek of the upcoming app at HealthBeat, VentureBeat’s health technology conference here.

It’s a consumer-friendly app with an approachable, simple design, based on Conroy’s short walk-through. When signing on to the app, people have a choice of looking at their data, picking a goal to work towards (like losing a pound or fitting into their favorite jeans), or getting medical care. The third option leads to another app, iTriage, which Aetna acquired in 2012, Conroy said.

Once you’ve picked a goal, the app can help you get there by setting achievable daily goals, like running a certain number of miles or consuming a certain number of calories. It can also show you how much you’ve walked each day (assuming it has step data from one of the compatible devices) and other details.

If you’ve given it access to your medical data, the app will also let you see vital stats like your body measurements, BMI, blood pressure, blood glucose level, and more details, all drawn from your last visit to the doctor’s office. It can also pull in data about your recent office visits and medications, and can even help remind you to take your meds.

There’s also a web version of the app.

Aetna’s challenge is going to be a steep one, given the large number of fitness apps out there. Many of them already integrate with a variety of different data sources — for instance, Runkeeper can also integrate data from Withings scales and Fitbit fitness-trackers; MapMyFitness helps you track your food consumption as well as your exercise; MyFitnessPal has an app library (as does Runkeeper); and all three are extensible through open APIs. And that’s just scratching the surface of the fitness-tracking universe.

Aetna has a couple of huge advantages, however: For instance, it has 38 million customers and made almost $500 million in profits in the most recent fiscal quarter.

The app won’t launch until June, but developers interested in integrating their apps can check out Aetna’s CarePass developer portal.

Photo credit: Michael O’Donnell/VentureBeat

One of my Twitter buddies recently joked that the ideal fitness device will be a neck collar that monitors the food going down your throat and then chokes you when you hit your calorie limit.

These devices don’t do that. But they may get you to hum the tune to “Chariots of Fire” when you exercise and motivate you to take an extra step or two. After all, they track your every move, and they won’t lie to you.

Take it from me: These are powerful motivators, and any one of them would be a good choice for you or your loved ones.

Basis Health Tracker, $199

This wristwatch health tracker from Basis Science packs a lot of technology. It uses an accelerometer to track your steps. It has a galvanic skin sensor to detect your sweat. It has an optical blood-flow sensor to track your heartbeat. It has a skin temperature sensor and an ambient room temperature sensor, so it knows if you’re hot because you are exercising or because you’re in a hot room. It also monitors when you’re sleeping and knows the best time to wake you up.

You can log onto the Basis Science website and study your stats via a cloud-based web service. The service focuses on actionable information, like reminders that you’ve been sitting in a chair for 40 minutes. The site tells you more about why it’s important to get enough sleep and allows you to drill down into the data to see patterns. With all of that data, you can learn what impact your physical activity has on your body, such as how it stirs your heart rate. Basis Science says that, due to overwhelming demand, it has stopped taking orders and will be shipping current orders in early 2013.

Striiv Smart Pedometer, $70

This second-generation device from Striiv can clip onto your clothing. It’s so small you’ll forget it’s there. The blue digital display shows the number of steps you’ve taken. It communicates with your iPhone via Bluetooth, so you can run Striiv’s iOS app to learn more about your habits. You can use the iPhone app alone to track your steps, since the phone comes with its own accelerometer. But the Striiv pedometer also has an altimeter, which can track how many stairs you climb in a day.

The pedometer tracks your steps and the app calculates how many miles you’ve walked. It also shows how many calories you’ve burned in a day, but it does not have access to your heart rate information. The app includes a fantasy-oriented role-playing game called MyLand. If you complete challenges, you earn points that you can then spend on goods in the fantasy world. Striiv says the new app can run in the background of your iOS device, and it won’t drain your battery.

On a bad day, my Striiv app step counter will tell me all of the steps I didn’t take. But on a recent trip to London, I managed to walk more than 36,000 steps in a single day. That was about seven miles and is equivalent to about 22 percent of the walking I usually do in a month. One of these days, I want to beat that all-time record. And I’ll gladly return to London to do it.

Fitbit One, $99

The folks at Fitbit are on their third device since they created the Fitbit Classic pedometer in 2008. Now the Fitbit One can track your steps, distance traveled, calories burned, stairs climbed, and your sleep. The device screen (which shows only a number) tells you how many steps you’ve moved.

The new device clips to your clothing easily. It syncs wirelessly with your smartphone via Bluetooth, or you can sync it via USB or Wi-Fi on your computer. You can look at your stats on the web. It’ll also teach you how to sleep better and will wake you up in the morning. It has a nice ecosystem of other devices, including the Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi scale and the Fitbit Zip for tracking kids.

You can set your own goals and challenges with the Fitbit One. Check out fellow VentureBeat writer Devindra Hardawar’s review here, in which he compares the One to the Jawbone Up.

Jawbone Up, $130

The first Up didn’t fare so well, since production problems made the device glitchy. Jawbone issued refunds and pulled it off the market. But it reissued the device recently. This time, the device isn’t as susceptible to water damage.

You can use it to track your steps, distance moved, calorie count, activity time, and activity intensity. It also tracks your light and deep sleep as well as your waking moments.

It comes with a bright iOS app that allows you to study your stats. And you can also use it to track your meals and share pictures of what you’re eating with your friends. If you really want to find out how many calories you’ve consumed, you can do so by checking against a big food database.

The battery lasts for 10 days, and the design is water-resistant. If you take a nap, it will wake you up at the optimal time, around 26.5 minutes. It reminds you to move when you have been inactive for too long. It has no display, so you can’t check your movements while on the move. You also have to sync it to your iPhone by plugging it into your headphone jack. Check out our review.

Larklife, $150

This baby from Lark tracks your steps and distance moved. It also tracks the type of exercise, the amount of time you spend doing it, the calories you burn, and when you started and stopped. If you have been inactive for a while, it will send you an alert to get moving. It tracks your sleep and offers you coaching about it.

As a diet logger, it tries to reduce the dullness of manually entering the meals you eat. It has a list of foods, letting you log what you eat with the touch of a button. You can also tap the screen to log that you have drunk a glass of water. This set of features about food intake is crucial to completing the loop of information about your activity, your body’s reaction to it, and refueling. However, it’s easy to forget.

If you remember, then Larklife can remind you of the best time of day for you to eat and how much you should eat.

Nike+ FuelBand, $150

The new Nike+ FuelBand gadget is a wristband that allows you to capture data on a variety of activities, like tossing a Frisbee or throwing a football. It collects information on exercise time, calories burned, steps taken, and overall movement. You wear it all day and transfer the data to the Nike+ web site through a USB or via your iPhone.

You can set a daily NikeFuel goal and track your progress. It syncs with the Nike+FuelBand app, which you can use to track your activity history and connect with friends online. Like the Fitbit One, the wristband has a display on the plastic. It can tell you the time, your goal, your steps walked, and other text-based information. You can share your achievements via Facebook, Twitter, and Path. It also just launched a NikeFuel Missions game, which is an attempt to “gamify,” or motivate you to do more exercise through entertainment.

BodyMedia Fit Core Armband, $149

You wear this watch-like band around your upper arm. The device is a third smaller than previous armbands created by BodyMedia. You can see the stats on the optional display device. It claims it has the “most accurate calories burned” number. An online subscription of $6.95 a month is required after a free trial period. The device comes with a wireless link.

Sensors track your motion and capture 5,000 points of data per minute, such as your sweat level, the rate at which heat leaves your body, your galvanic skin response, and skin temperature. With this data, BodyMedia calculates the calories you burn throughout a day. It also captures info on your sleeping patterns such as how long it takes to fall asleep. It gives you steps taken, calories burned, and your sleep patterns.

Mio Alpha

This one is for professional athletes. Mio Global says this heart-rate monitor and wristwatch is the first performance-level strapless monitor that can measure your heart rate accurately at up to 12 miles per hour. It uses optical blood flow technology to sense the volume of blood under your skin. This measures your heart rate and calculates other data such as speed, distance, pace, and location. You can connect it via Bluetooth to your smartphone.

The device is not available yet, but the company says it is launching soon. Pricing details haven’t been disclosed yet.

Under Armour E39

This is a “compression shirt” that has sensors for tracking an athlete’s biometrics. It captures heart rate, breathing rate, lung capacity, acceleration, body positioning and motion. The device has an accelerometer, microprocessor, and built-in storage, and it connects wirelessly to any smartphone, tablet, or computer.

The circular device in the middle, dubbed “the bug,” contains a computer, hard drive, and accelerometer. Under Armour is targeting college and pro sports teams with the shirt. It isn’t available just yet.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Fitness tracking pioneer Fitbit isn’t sitting still in the face of heavy competition. The company today announced two new devices: Fitbit Zip, a smart activity tracker that retails for just $59.99, and Fitbit One, a new flagship device meant to replace the popular $99.99 Fitbit Ultra.

Both devices allow you to wirelessly synchronize your Fitbit performance with a Bluetooth 4.0 compatible smartphone (like the iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S III). You can even synchronize in the background now, without even opening up the Fitbit app on your phone. That’s a major improvement over the Fitbit Ultra, which can only synchronize to desktop computers with a special wireless dongle.

Fitbit’s two-pronged approach with its next generation of devices could help the company better compete against the popular Nike+ Fuelband, which is more expensive at $149. In particular, Fitbit hopes to make inroads with families that want to track their performance together with the Zip device, Fitbit cofounder and CEO James Park told VentureBeat in an interview last week. The company is also considering family bundle pricing if the Zip takes off.

The addition of wireless synchronizing is a clear shot at one of the Nike+ Fuelband’s most useful features. But according to Park, the two companies aren’t playing a zero-sum game. “We’re sold in very different places, and if you look at our marketing we target very different people,” he said. “I think the great thing about wearable activity monitors is that there’s not going to be one form factor.”

With the Fitbit Zip, available today, the company has designed a friendly activity tracker that’s somewhat reminiscent of the Tamagotchi virtual pets from the ’90s. It sports a simple black and white display which you can tap to jump through various statistics, like total steps taken every day, total distance, and the amount of calories you’ve burned. You also don’t have to worry about recharging the Fitbit Zip, since it’s powered by a single watch battery, which the company estimates will last around six months.

For its flagship Fitbit One, the company has basically refined its existing Fitbit Ultra design. The new tracker is 40 percent smaller than the Ultra, and it also adds a silent alarm clock to gently wake you up. In addition to all of the activity tracking that the Fitbit Zip covers, the Fitbit One also tracks your sleep (something that the Nike+ Fuelband doesn’t do).

Unfortunately we don’t have a firm release date for the Fitbit One just yet, but the company says it’s coming in late October.

Both new Fitbit devices let you explore your fitness data on Fitbit.com and through the Fitbit app on iOS and Android. Come October, the company will offer real-time leaderboards so you can compare your performance with friends, messaging to your friends, and you’ll also be able to get alerts on your phone as you approach your fitness goals.

In addition to Nike’s FuelBand, Fitbit also competes with Striiv’s step counter, and Jawbone’s Up wristband (which is off the market now, but is due to return soon).

I had a chance to test out the Fitbit Zip for a few days, and it works as advertised. On one busy Saturday running around New York City, I learned that I had walked more than four miles. Setting up the device for wireless syncing on Fitbit’s new iPhone app was also a cinch. At a mere $60, the Fitbit Zip’s cute personality could win the company some new fans, especially among health conscious parents.

After raising $12 million in a third round of funding earlier this year, Chicago-based Fitbit has raised a total of $23.4 million from Foundry Group, True Ventures, and others.

Fitness-tracking app Runtastic is harnessing this fascination/narcissism with physical achievement by teaming up with Google Earth to provide 3D footage that can be played back and shared.

The technology collects GPS data while you traverse a marathon course, ski down a mountain, or cycle across the Golden Gate Bridge. It also works for leisurely strolls through a park (high heart rates are not required for the app to function).

After you finish working out, a 3D video will reflect your journey. If your motivation is to impress coworkers with your physical prowess, send it around the company email chain. If your goal is to remember the exquisite flower fields you biked past on vacation, save it with your trip photos.

“We saw that running, cycling, and outdoor sport activities could be more interesting than only seeing a number at the end,” said CEO Florian Gschwandtner. “You can’t share your experience with data, you need images. It becomes a memory.”

Runtastic is a popular free app that tracks sports data like elapsed time, average speed, calorie consumption, and heart rate while exercising. The collected information can be uploaded to the site, as well as shared on social networks.

There are more apps in this area than miles in a marathon — MapMyRun, Endomondo, AllSport GPS, Fitness Pro, SmartRunner, Nike + GPS, and SparkPeople to name a few. Runtastic is doing well in this particular race, however. It recently hit the 10 million download mark and became cash flow positive.

Like true athletes, the founders are fueled by competition. They strove to distinguish themselves from the pack by continuing to innovate and develop technology. This latest feature is available under the Runtastic Pro app for Android, which costs $4.

Runtastic was founded in October 2009 and has never received institutional investment.

If you haven’t started training for the next Olympics, there is no time like the present.