A Baltimore startup named Videntity, which is based in Canton, won a $10,000 prize last week in connection with a software developer challenge in San Diego.

Videntity, which is run by Alan C. Viars, won the prize from the West Wireless Health Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization that's promoting the application of wireless technology in health care. [Full press release]

For the contest, Viars' company integrated consumer devices that generate real-time health data, such as a Wii balance board, with a social network (Facebook). In short, Viars created a demo where you can step on a Wii and it uploads your weight to the Internet.

And he also made a Facebook app for walkers to share their pedometer data with their Facebook friends. Viars, a computer scientist, has developed an open-source framework that enables medical devices and communication devices to communicate with each other. (I.e. a blood pressure monitor that can text message your reading? Viars has figured out how to do that.)

The implications of making this technology possible are vast. People -- and companies and even our government -- could start to use this new technology in social gaming tied to their health, nutrition and dieting efforts.

Viars is also taking advantage of an effort in health care information systems to give people and patients more access and control over their own health data.

From a health care and healthy living perspective, "the government and managed care providers are very interested in behavior change from a cost saving perspective," Viars told me.

The good news about Viars' work so far is that it's all open source, meaning that other software developers can take his programs and start to build their own applications with it.