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Edison Nation Medical and Sharecare Join Forces To Bring Bright Healthcare Ideas to Life

Inaugural Innovation Search Held In Conjunction With Breast Cancer Awareness Month

ATLANTA/CHARLOTTE, N.C. – October 2, 2014 – Edison Nation Medical, the premier healthcare product innovation marketplace, today announced a partnership with Sharecare, a health and wellness engagement platform created by Dr. Oz and WebMD founder Jeff Arnold. Edison Nation Medical brings over 12 years of experience working with individuals and small businesses to commercialize their innovation ideas, and this collaboration will enable Sharecare’s community of consumers and healthcare practitioners to bring their own product ideas to life.

“Sharecare members are part of a unique, wellness-focused community, and many have the personal experience and creativity necessary to improve patient care through innovative new ideas,” said Robert Grajewski, President of Edison Nation Medical. “We are proud to work with Sharecare to tap into their community’s expertise to improve care standards and commercialize great healthcare ideas to benefit patients everywhere. And since we’re launching our partnership in October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we plan to work closely with Sharecare to inspire innovation around this important disease.”

To kick off the partnership, Sharecare and Edison Nation Medical are co-sponsoring an innovation search for disruptive new inventions to improve the prevention, early detection and treatment of lymphedema, a condition of localized fluid retention and tissue swelling caused by a compromised lymphatic system that affects approximately 140 million people worldwide and up to 89% of breast cancer patients. Currently, there is no cure for lymphedema; and treatment focuses on reducing the swelling and controlling the pain.

“Whether someone is coping with an illness, caring for a loved one or simply trying to live healthier, we see our users provide each other with support and encouragement every day – and that sometimes comes in the form of innovative ideas,” said Dawn Whaley, co-president of Sharecare. “With Edison, we’re able to give those users the opportunity to bring their creative solutions to market and share care with the world.”

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Edison Nation Medical and Sharecare encourage anyone to submit their inventions involving devices, diagnostic mechanisms, compression garments, pneumatic compression equipment or other product concepts related to lymphedema. The companies will carefully evaluate all ideas submitted with the aim of commercializing the most promising innovations, and sharing the resulting royalties and revenues with the inventors. The search is open to the public, and individual inventors or small businesses worldwide can submit ideas at www.EdisonNationMedical.com/lymphedema through Sunday, November 30. All submissions will be held in the strictest confidence.

Joining Edison Nation Medical is free, and inventions submitted through the company’s confidential, secure online portal are reviewed in detail by medical, product development and legal experts. Following this in-depth evaluation, Edison Nation Medical’s expert design and engineering teams invest in and improve concepts as appropriate. The end goal is to commercialize each qualified product idea either by licensing the invention to a medical device manufacturer or by starting a company around the invention idea and, when successful, Edison Nation Medical shares licensing royalties or revenues with the inventor.

For more information about the Sharecare and Edison Nation Medical partnership, please visit www.EdisonNationMedical.com/Sharecare or www.Sharecare.com/ENM. For more information about the lymphedema innovation search or to submit an original idea, go to www.EdisonNationMedical.com/lymphedema.

About Edison Nation Medical

Edison Nation Medical is a healthcare innovation marketplace with deep expertise in open innovation, product development, and healthcare. Born out of collaboration with Carolinas HealthCare System (the second largest public health system in the United States), Edison Nation Medical’s mission is to break down the barriers to healthcare innovation. We make this a reality by providing a clear and easy pathway through our open innovation platform for anyone — physicians, nurses, entrepreneurs, even patients and caregivers — to submit a medical invention idea for full evaluation and potential commercialization. Edison Nation Medical innovation headquarters is in Charlotte, NC with satellite offices in San Francisco and New York City. For more information, please visit www.EdisonNationMedical.com or find Edison Nation Medical on TwitterFacebook, and LinkedIn.

About Sharecare

Sharecare is a health and wellness engagement platform that provides people with personalized resources to help them live their healthiest lives. Nearly 40 million people have shared more than 5 billion data points about their health status and habits with Sharecare, which uses that information to create a comprehensive health profile allowing users to access all of their health resources in one place and dynamically connect to the knowledge, evidence-based programs and health professionals they need. Created by Jeff Arnold and Dr. Mehmet Oz in 2010, Sharecare’s predictive and personalized platform is accessed daily by millions of consumers, including viewers of The Dr. Oz Show, patient populations of the country’s leading hospital systems and every Soldier in the United States Army.