Jiff Inc. Unveils Circle of Health, the Industry's First Private HIPAA-Compliant Healthcare Social Network and Digital Health Apps Platform

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Jiff Inc. today unveiled the industry's first private HIPAA-compliant healthcare social network and digital health apps platform, called Circle of Health. Jiff will give consumers the unprecedented ability to create their own Circle of Health in a private, secure, HIPAA-compliant environment that is entirely consumer-centric. The closed beta version of Jiff will be available for public access during the South by Southwest Interactive Festival.

"To date, healthcare has been communicated only on paper and through phone calls and office visits. This is a $2.7 trillion industry without an effective way for physicians and patients to communicate and effectively keep track of the patient's progress between office visits.  Circle of Health changes that," said Derek Newell, CEO of Jiff. "Circle of Health will allow consumers, their loved ones and their care providers to share critical health information and easily monitor and manage their health through digital health applications that seamlessly integrate with each other."

Jiff is a consumer-centered healthcare social network and digital health apps platform that allows users to build personalized communities of care comprised of family, friends, doctors, hospice professionals, midwives, home health providers, health coaches and anyone else with whom they want to connect and collaborate. In this private, secure, HIPAA-compliant network, they can share medical documents, videos and information useful to managing health and wellness. Jiff is free, and patients own and control all of their data. Creating a Circle of Health is simple; consumers simply go to Jiff and add three to 15 others who they would like to be in their network. Those people then accept or reject the invitation. Users can also set up networks for others, such as parents or friends. Jiff carries no advertisements.

"This closed beta launch of Jiff marks a major milestone in Jiff's development of a comprehensive platform that will host a broad array of digital health apps for consumers," Newell said. "Patients, healthcare providers, insurance companies and others have all grappled with the enormity of healthcare data and information, and the deluge is only expected to worsen. Jiff offers a solution for managing all that data in a personalized way."

As part of the Jiff network, Jiff is building a broad collection of digital health applications that users can also access. Jiff's first application, the JiffPad, allows patients to record the knowledge communicated in a doctor's visit in short videos called JiffTalks and share them instantly with their Circle of Health on Jiff.  Following the end of the closed beta, consumers may register for the open beta on Jiff.

About Jiff Inc.

Jiff Inc. provides the first private HIPAA-compliant healthcare social network and digital health apps platform. Jiff's platform allows consumers and healthcare professionals to build personalized and private communities of care in a HIPAA-compliant environment that connects people to their healthcare in a way not possible before Jiff. Founded in 2010 in Palo Alto, California, Jiff has assembled a world-class team of healthcare and consumer internet leaders to deploy a suite of elegant, effective and easy to use digital health tools that will redefine consumer and healthcare professionals' expectations for what can and should be done to improve healthcare.

The first application announced on the Jiff platform, the JiffPad, is an iPad educational platform that makes doctor- patient communications more effective and memorable by transforming conversations and images into videos that patients can reference and share from the privacy of their own homes. JiffPad won the Morgenthaler Ventures' 2011 DC2VC Start-up showcase and was honored as a finalist at the prestigious TechCrunch Disrupt conference.

SOURCE Jiff Inc.