Two years ago we created the first timeline that tracked the milestones and newsworthy events surrounding the adoption of the iPhone by healthcare professionals. A little more than a year ago we updated that timeline so it spanned 18 months of health-related iPhone news. Today, our medical iPhone timeline stretches across 30 months of news events -- for two and a half years medical professionals have used the device in clinical settings.
It's clear that in 2011 the amount of health-related iPhone news has surged and what was once newsy in 2008 and 2009 is no longer novel. What is perhaps more clear is that while the iPhone has steadily built its healthcare user base,
The timeline that follows serves as a reminder of some of these notable events. We know this list, while extensive, is not exhaustive. I'm sure we missed a number of important events.
Be sure to let us know what's missing in the comments section, and we'll update accordingly.
So, which milestones led to the success of the iPhone and iPad in healthcare? Check out our iPhone as a medical tool timeline below. Each page documents the events that took place during a particular month -- or in some cases, over the course of a couple of months if the newscycle was slow:
April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 - July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 - March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011
2009: FDA's Don Witters says possibility of the iPhone becoming designated as a medical device is very real.
November 29, 2008: A medical student successfully lobbies Apple to create a "medical" category for applications in the AppStore that would include mostly applications for physicians, nurses and other healthcare workers. The new category took 82 applications from the still existing Health & Fitness category and marked the first spin-off category Apple has created. More
January 22, 2009: Epocrates Essentials becomes available in Apple's AppStore for iPhone and iTouch users. More
February 12, 2009: During a question and answer period at a medical records event in Palm Springs, CA, the Food and Drug Administration's Don Witters says that there may be circumstances where the iPhone should be considered a medical device and regulated as one. More
March 17, 2009: At Apple's special sneak preview of iPhone OS 3.0, Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone Software at Apple gushed: "Now here's a class [of services] that we think will be really interesting: medical devices." Forstall explained that the new iPhone OS will allow application developers to sync medical devices like BP monitors via both Bluetooth and USB. "So imagine the possibilities," Forstall continued. "We think this is profound." Apple then invited a rep from LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson company onstage to demonstrate how a Bluetooth-enabled blood glucose monitor synchs up to a diabetes management application running on the iPhone. More and More
March 31, 2009: An iPhone developer uses Google Health's API to create Health Cloud, which allows Google Health users to view their personal health record from their iPhone. Google has yet to take the PHR mobile itself. More
AirstripOB
April 8, 2009: AirStrip Technologies announced that the FDA had granted the company's iPhone application, AirStrip OB, clearance to market the app to physicians via Apple's App Store. AirStrip OB enables obstetricians to use their iPhones to remotely access real-time and historical waveform data for both the mother and the baby. The data set includes heart tracings, contraction patterns, nursing notes and exam status. The app pulls the data from the hospitals' labor and delivery units. AirStrip has been planning its iPhone launch since July of 2008. More
April 9, 2009: By many accounts, Sarasota-based start-up Voalte steals the show at the HIMSS event in Chicago with its iPhone-based voice, alarm, text service for physicians, nurses and other hospital workers. More
April 15, 2009: Manhattan Research finds that twice as many doctors are using iPhones in 2009 than were in 2008. More
April 17, 2009: A pediatrician in New York is the first to access Allscripts' popular electronic medical record using the company's new iPhone application.More
April 21, 2009: The "medical" category in Apple's iPhone AppStore becomes the third fastest growing category of applications for the first quarter of 2009, according to O'Reilly Radar.
April 30, 2009: Doylestown Hospital, located outside of Philadelphia, PA, recently outfitted its 360 independent physicians and hospital staff with 3G iPhones in an effort to help them save time, be more productive and provide better care for their patients. More
May 1, 2009: Winner of the $10,000 DiabetesMine Challenge effectively turns the iPhone into the controller for a combined glucose meter + insulin pump. More
May 5, 2009: At the height of the "swine flu" or H1N1 media frenzy, a number of quick coding developers created apps that helped people track swine flu cases' locations, determine if their symptoms were signs of swine flu and more. The rush to create swine flu apps demonstrated the platform's ability to offer timely applications to the market when needed, which could come in handy for future public health events. More
May 29, 2009: Dr. Natalie Hodge emerges as "The First iPhone Doctor" by running a pediatrics concierge service called Personal Pediatrics almost entirely from her iPhone. More
May 31, 2009: Scott Eising, director of product management for Mayo Clinic Internet Services, said the launch of the iPhone and the success of its AppStore convinced him and his colleagues that the time to figure out a mobile strategy is now. More
Image from Apple's patent on wireless health sensors
June 8, 2009: At Apple's World Wide Developer Conference AirStrip's Dr. Cameron Powell takes the stage to demonstrate how the new iPhone 3.0 operating system lets "push" notifications from its remote wireless monitoring device transmit EKG systems to a doctor's or clinician's mobile phone. Apple's Mark Wilson reportedly said that "The medical community is flocking to the iPhone" at the WWDC event during his introductory remarks for AirStrip. More
June 9, 2010: Apple puts FDA regulatory onus on developers. Under the iPhone developer agreement section labeled “Regulatory Compliance for Health, Medical and Related Apps,” Apple writes: “You agree that You will not seek any regulatory marketing permissions or make any determinations that may result in any Apple products being deemed regulated or that may impose any obligations or limitations on Apple. By submitting Your Application to Apple for selection for distribution via the App Store, You represent and warrant that You are in full compliance with any applicable laws, regulations, and policies, including but not limited to all FDA laws, regulations and policies….” More
June 15, 2009: Audi Lucas and Tim Gee debate whether Apple's regulatory policy for its apps developers is reasonable. More
June 19, 2009: Dr. John Halamka dubs mHealth the "Cool Technology" of the week: “The iPhone is quickly turning into a major resource for accessing mobile health applications. Although I find the iPhone a challenging device for data entry, it’s a great device for data viewing. Realtime viewing of waveform, imaging and text data via a handheld mobile device. That’s cool!” More
June 19, 2009: Boston’s Children’s Hospital’s Informatics Program published a group of principles to guide the creation of a new health information infrastructure for the U.S. The piece was a follow-up on an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine in March. The latest article argued for the development of a platform model, very much like Apple iPhone’s setup, to encourage the development of “substitutable” health care applications. More
June 24, 2009: Dr. David Kibbe predicted that successful EMR vendors should look to the iPhone for inspiration. Once EMR vendors begin to open up their APIs, the industry will begin to see thousands of new applications built on the EHR platform just like Apple’s AppStore, Kibbe predicted. More
June 25, 2009: The USPTO grants Apple an iPhone-related patent that covers wireless remote monitoring of vital signs. More
July 1, 2009: Apple’s senior director of worldwide product development for the iPhone recently left the company to join venture capital firm Opus Capital as a general partner. Bob Borchers, 43, previously worked at Nokia and Nike before joining Apple in 2004. Borchers told VentureWire he won’t be leaving the wireless industry: his focus at Opus will include wireless and medicine as well as mobile marketing technologies. More
2009 Mockup of an Aetna iPhone app
August 7, 2009: Aetna’s head of eHealth Product Management, Dan Greden: “The opportunity [with the iPhone] is we don’t have to ask [iPhone users] to wear another device to do this we can tap into their existing device they are already wearing,” Greden said. “Just add an app to it. Last I checked there were half a dozen iPhone apps that we are working on integrating now.”
August 11, 2009: Zepherella has added an iPhone app pilot to its online service, which aims to give physicians and patients an efficient and stress-free way to complete payment transactions online or through the iPhone. More
August 25, 2009: Matthew Connor, a rising junior at Princeton University received a $100,000 grant from Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) to build a more in-depth online portal for his diabetes management iPhone app, Islet, which Connor and his brother launched last September. More
August 25, 2009: A survey of 1,000 medical students conducted by Epocrates found that 45 percent of the students that had a smartphone owned an iPhone -- far more than any other type of smartphone. What's more, nearly 60 percent of those medical students who did not have a smartphone planned on buying either an iPhone or an iPod Touch within the next year. More
Chopra speaking at the 2010 mHealth Summit. Photo: Ethan Goldwater
September 11, 2009: “The iPhone can be an integral part in advancing the fundamental science — the very complexities of biology and understanding of the human genome can be made accessible through tools like the iPhone,” Consumer genomics company Illumina’s CEO and President, Jay Flatley told Apple in a recent interview. “I think it is the convergence of the science and IT technology that today creates a unique possibility to manage our human health in new ways,” Flatley said. “It’s an incredibly exciting time.” More
September 16, 2009: It was a hard fight to get insurance companies to cover dedicated text-to-speech devices for speech-impaired patients, but it finally happened in 2001, according to a report in The New York Times. Kara Lynn, an ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease patient, used to use a PC with text-to-speech software loaded on it because that’s what her insurance would cover. The computer had to be stripped down of all other capabilities to be eligible for coverage — no web browsing, email — nothing. As you might imagine, however, Lynn wanted to “take her voice with her” where ever she went, which wasn’t possible with a PC. Instead she bought an iPhone and an iPhone application that she believes works better. Insurers, of course, won't cover it. More
September 28, 2009: The US federal government's first Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra explains how he uses his iPhone to track his eating habits: “Everyday today when I visit a certain coffee shop, I enter into my iPhone — I click, click, click — and it tells me exactly what my sugar consumption patterns were from that grande vanilla nonfat latte, and it becomes very clear to me what this has done to my nutrition habits." More
Boston Scientific Latitude Connected (Concept) iPhone app
October 8, 2009: Voalte announced this week a collaboration agreement with Sarasota Memorial Hospital that sees the care facility’s nurses using Voalte’s iPhone-based voice, alarm and text offering. The service allows Sarasota Memorial’s nurses to send and receive text messages, make voice calls, and receive critical care alarms through their iPhones in an effort to provide faster response times for their patients. The hospital began piloting the Voalte service in June. More
October 14, 2009: “Last month, Stanford Hospital & Clinics, in Palo Alto, Calif., started a trial with Apple and Epic Systems … to test software that will let medical staff access patient charts on Apple’s iPhone,” the WSJ reported. More
October 23, 2009: Earlier this month at the Body Computing Conference in Los Angeles, Boston Scientific showed off a concept iPhone app, called Latitude Connected, that is currently focused on cardiac rhythm care management, but its full range of functions enable physicians to access patient records, monitor implanted devices, tap into patient support networks and schedule follow-up care, according to a report from Fast Company. More
November 4, 2009: During its third quarter conference call this week, WebMD announced that its Medscape Mobile iPhone application, which it launched in July, has already been downloaded more than 200,000 times. Medscape Mobile is an app the company created for physicians, but WebMD said the total number of downloads for its consumer iPhone apps now tops 1 million downloads — and its first consumer iPhone app was launched less than a year ago.More
November 18, 2009: RidRx’s new iPhone peripheral, iStetho Adapter enables users to connect old stethoscopes to an iPhone or iPod Touch. The company also developed an iPhone app, iStethoscope Pro, and suggests that users look to iPhone apps iMurmur or iAuscultate to analyze the sounds from the stethoscope better. More
November 30, 2009: Asim Choudhri, MD, a physician in the neuroradiology division at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore presented a study 15 of the 25 patients were correctly identified as having acute appendicitis. These diagnoses proved accurate for 74 out of 75 interpretations, which is about 99 percent of the time. There was only one false negative — and no false positives. More
December 1, 2009: Bradley Merrill Thompson explains how to get the FDA to clear a mobile health app. More
December 11, 2009: Apple announced the top selling apps, songs, games and podcasts from 2009 in an iTunes feature it called iTunes Rewind 2009. Perhaps surprisingly, one medical iPhone app made the list of the top 30 selling iPhone applications in 2009: Proloquo2Go. The app, which costs $189.999, appears among apps that generated the most revenue in 2009, which seems to be how Apple created a list of the Top Selling apps for the year. “Proloquo2Go is a new product from AssistiveWare that provides a full-featured communication solution for people who have difficulty speaking." More
December 14, 2009: While Apple supports the Nike+ activity monitor and has demonstrated a connected blood glucometer made by Lifescan at its iPhone 3G unveiling, its movement toward championing peripheral health devices for the iPhone has been decidedly limited to date. However, a recent patent application points to the a lot of activity on the connected health front inside the company’s research and development teams: An Apple patent describes a couple of methods for using a wireless earbud to track a user’s blood oxygen level, body temperature, heat flux and heart rate. The patent application notes that the earbud could use infrared photodetectors to monitor the user’s biometrics. More
January 6, 2010: Mayo Clinic has partnered with smartphone application developer DoApps to form a new start-up, called mRemedy, which is focused on creating health apps for smartphones. mRemedy’s apps will be based on Mayo Clinic’s research and services. The first mRemedy app, Mayo Clinic Meditation, launched last week for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. More
January 13, 2010: After three months of rumors, details surrounding Epic Systems’ partnership with Apple for a mobile phone-based electronic health record (EHR) application have come to light: Just a few days ago, Epic System’s iPhone application, called Haiku, became available on Apple’s AppStore: “Haiku provides authorized clinical users of Epic’s Electronic Health Record with secure access to clinic schedules, hospital patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes. Haiku also supports dictation and In Basket access." More
January 20, 2010: American film producer, Dan Woolley, was trapped in the ruins of a hotel in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti during last week’s earthquake. Woolley used the light from his digital camera to examine his broken foot and head wound. He then used a medical application on his iPhone to look up how to dress his wounds, which included a broken foot and a head wound, according to the report. Woolley said that during the 65 hours that he spent in the ruined hotel’s elevator shaft, he also looked up symptoms for shock using his iPhone medical app. More
January 27, 2010: Apple confirmed the rumors today and unveiled a tablet device, which looks like a giant iPhone, called iPad. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his team of presenters at Apple’s iPad launch event this morning did not mention the healthcare vertical as a key market for the iPad: It looks to be just that. More
February 8, 2010: Epocrates surveyed 350 clinicians to gauge their interest in buying the iPad for use at work: "Nine percent of survey respondents plan to buy the iPad when it was immediately available, another 13 percent plan to buy it within the year, thirty-eight percent of respondents expressed interest in the iPad with the request of more information to solidify their purchase decision." More
March 15, 2010: MIMvista, the iPhone app the FDA asked to be taken out of the AppStore: In August of 2008, we submitted our first 510(k). We knew that the iPhone software raised new issues as compared to workstation software, specifically in terms of its intended use. On the iPhone, the images would be viewed under different circumstances than are typical for radiologists (reading rooms). This difference did raise new issues of safety and effectiveness. To be honest, this dramatically new direction for our company, and the speed at which it occurred, left us ill-prepared for the scope of the regulatory process that would unfold. Within only a few weeks of submitting, we were contacted by the FDA and told that our app could not be on the app store (despite the fact that it was both free and labeled as “not intended for diagnostic use”) because it served as marketing for a device that was not cleared for marketing. We promptly removed it. More
April 8, 2010: The HHS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) have awarded Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital a $15 million grant for a four year research project to “investigate, evaluate, and prototype approaches to achieving an ‘iPhone-like’ health information technology platform model.” More
April 8, 2010: Apple announces the iPhone OS 4.0, which includes 1500 news APIs for developers and new features, including multi-tasking. iPhone users with the OS 4.0 installed will be able to keep more than one app running at the same time, sort of. More
April 23, 2010: Nick Volosin, director of technical services, at Visali, California-based Kaweah Delta Health Care, has been piloting three Apple iPads for X-ray images, EKG results and other patient monitoring programs, according to a report from Network World. Volosin now plans to buy 100 more iPads for use by the care group’s home health and hospice care workers, nurses, dietitians and pharmacists. More
May 5, 2010: Manhattan Research reports that 72 percent of physicians are using smartphones, with an increase to 81 percent expected by 2012. BlackBerry is still the top smartphone choice, but the iPhone is rapidly rising, being neck and neck with BlackBerry in adoption rates. If one combines iPhone with iPod Touch use by physicians (not technically a smartphone), Apple beats RIM in users. More
June 2, 2010: Steve Brown, of Health Hero Network fame, secures $2.3 million for his new start-up, Snaptic. Snaptic's iPhone & Android note-taking app, 3Banana, helps users record and keep information on their fitness, diet and health. More
June 2, 2010: Epocrates adds a "Contact Pfizer" feature to its iPhone application. Healthcare providers can now access the Pfizer Medical Information Group and obtain scientific answers to their product questions or to report an adverse event. More
June 2, 2010: PatientKeeper releases an iPad version of their popular app. CEO Paul Brient tells MobiHealthNews that "What iPad brings is more real estate. "The iPad is larger than the iPhone but still smaller than [legacy] tablets. The iPad is such an intriguing platform because it’s really the best of both world — we can take advantage of this ‘tweener’ effect, if you will.” More
June 10, 2010: Steve Jobs announces the iPhone 4 at a press event in Cupertino, CA. The iPhone 4 is 24 percent slimmer than the 3GS and features a front-facing camera, which utilizes a new app called FaceTime. The mobile healthcare industry begins to see the possiblities for FaceTime in patient/physician consultations, amongst other uses. More
June 15, 2010: A Remington Report survey says that 95 percent of physicians owning smartphones use medical apps. Of those surveyed, thirty-one percent own an iPhone, making it the leader among smartphones. Epocrates, Medscape and Skyscape were the most popular medical apps among those surveyed. More
June 21, 2010: Humana launches a large-scale effort consisting of a series of iPhone games that encourage healthy behaviors. “We’re excited to be the first health insurance company to offer people fun, healthy mobile games that challenge their minds and bodies while encouraging healthy behaviors,” says Paul Puopolo, director of consumer innovation at Humana. More
July 9, 2010: Agamatrix tells MobiHealthNews that their WaveSense Jazz blood glucose meter will become the first FDA-approved iPhone medical device in February 2011. The WaveSense connect directly to the iPhone via a USB download cable and interfaces with their DiabetesManager app. More
July 29th, 2010: CVS Caremark launches a free iPhone app that lets anyone with an iPhone look up drug information in its database. If the user is a CVS Caremark PBM (pharmacy benefits manager) member, users can refill prescriptions, check prescription order status, view prescription history, check drug cost, find a nearby network pharmacy, and FastStart, which enables users to request a new prescription from their iPhone. More
July 31, 2010: AirStrip Technologies, makers of AirStripOB, one of the very first FDA approved medical applications , announces FDA approval of their AirStrip Remote Patient Monitoring solution (RPM), which includes AirStrip RPM Critical Care and AirStrip RPM Cardiology. The clearance significantly expands AirStrip’s suite of applications. More
August 11, 2010: Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield launches an iPhone app, Health@Hand, co-developed with ADAM and based on that company’s Medzio application. The app is customized with specific information for Highmark members that enables them to find healthcare services and physicians available within their plan. Users can also search for providers within a certain radius of their current location using their phone’s GPS. “A lot of our competitors are working on or have offered personal health records (PHR) wallets for mobile phones," Steffan Johnson, Senior Consumerism Lead, Highmark BCBS told MobiHealthNews. "We wanted something that was a little more forward-thinking. Our goal is to educate members about their health not just help them carry their insurance card around with them electronically.” More
August 25, 2010: A Business Insider commentary piece argues that the real future growth will be in physician centered apps for both the iPad and iPhone. The report includes interviews with McKinsey & Co. as well as an academic at Columbia University: "For now, the most widely used health apps are ‘faddy’ wellness apps," according to McKinsey & Co. Principal Lisa Ellis. More
August 26, 2010: MobiHealthNews sizes up the iPad's place in healthcare, with an infographic showing the interest and opportunity in Apple's tablet device. More
September 1, 2010: UK regulatory red tape proves to be a large hurdle for iPhone medical device makers. ”The approach of the regulators is not well worked out yet. There’s a wonderful new world out there but we need to find a way for regulators to protect patients and doctors, while not impeding innovation, research and development,” Peter Bentley, the inventor of an iPhone app that supposedly turns the device into a stethoscope, tells the UK’s Guardian. More
September 21, 2010: French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Aventis announces its plans to be the first FDA-approved iPhone medical device, with a blood glucose meter plug-in called iBGStar. Agamatrix, also the maker of the WaveSense, is the manufacturer. The iPhone BGM plug-in will interact with a not yet Apple-approved iBGStar Diabetes Manager App that will help users track blood glucose, carbs intake and insulin dose. More
September 29, 2010: During a poll of 700 medical students set to be future physicians by Epocrates, nearly 70 percent said they owned either an Apple iPhone or iPod touch, which marked a 39 percent increase over the findings from Epocrates’ 2009 survey. Forty percent of those surveyed planned to upgrade to a new smartphone within the next twelve months; of those forty percent, 24 percent expected to switch to an Android device. More
October 27, 2010: PatientSafe Solutions unveils its PatientTouch solution, which it created for Apple’s latest iPod touch. Their plan is to make the iPod Touch an all-in-one mobile healthcare device, with the PatientTouch application providing medication management workflow including bedside medication verification and electronic medication admission records, nursing workflow, pre-admission testing, admission, discharge and home care.
John Halamka explained on his Life as a Healthcare CIO blog:
“Their idea is simple – leverage the iPod Touch 4G form factor and the iOS 4 SDK to create an all in one mobile device for healthcare. Their work thus far has included medication management workflow including bedside medication verification and electronic medication admission records. Their future vision encompasses numerous aspects of nursing workflow, pre-admission testing, admission, discharge and home care.” More
November 17, 2010: According to enterprise mobility vendor Good Technology, healthcare is among the top three industries adopting Apple’s iPad for business use. Good’s estimate is based simply on its own user base, which includes some 4,000 enterprise customers. Good’s customers have deployed iPads at a varying rate from one iPad to more than 1,000. More
December 1, 2010: The US Army conducts pilot tests to determine whether electronic medical records (EMR) applications running on Apple iOS and Android devices can be used in the field. The Army’s Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4) tests the apps on the iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, and Android powered devices like HTC’s EVO and Samsung’s Epic, according to a report in Federal Telemedicine News. More
December 14, 2010: UCLA'S Los Angeles School of Nursing equipped its third year undergraduate students and first-year master’s entry clinical nursing students with iPod touch devices. Some 118 of the students received the devices during a robing ceremony where each student is given a white coat to “signify their journey from classroom to the clinical setting,” Courtney Lyder the dean of the school stated. The devices came preloaded with three medical apps: Nursing Central, Medical Spanish, & NCLEX Review. More
December 30, 2010: Dr. David Albert uploads a video demo of an iPhone case that he invented, which he calls the iPhoneECG, since it transmits a "clinical grade ECG" to an iPhone app. Albert's video goes viral eventually accumulating hundreds of thousands of views. The iPhoneECG becomes one of the smash hits of CES 2011 where Albert and his device make it onto national television programs that covered the big consumer tech event. More
January 5th, 2011: Withings, developer of the WiFi-connected weight scale WiScale, announces two new products: a blood pressure monitor and a baby monitor that both connect to Apple devices, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Each device will feed collected data into their own respective apps. More
January 20, 2011: Dr. Dan Schultz, former Director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the FDA, participates in a webinar moderated by Dr. Leslie Saxon, the Executive Director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Body Computing. Saxon asked Schultz if mHealth companies should wait to bring products to market while the FDA figures out how best to tackle the new challenges brought about by connected health devices. “I would not say that people should be sitting and waiting,” Schultz said. "There is an opportunity for companies to do their own self-assessment and document the results of that assessment. Then, should there be changes and more specific regulatory policies then at least they have something to go back to and say that they didn’t just go out there willy-nilly and market a product that was a device without going to the [FDA].” More
January 27, 2011: An iPhone application to enable users to help strangers in need of emergency CPR, created by interns at Northern Kentucky University’s Center for Applied Informatics, garners big news. The app allows users who have been trained in CPR and who are willing to help strangers in need, to receive an alert if someone is located in their general area. When a 911 dispatch center receives a call for an emergency occurring near the user, a push notification is sent to the user with the victim’s location along with an alert about whether an automated external defibillator is located on the way or nearby. More
February 2, 2011: RLTS vendor Versus Technology, a vendor of RLTS (real-time location systems) specifically for healthcare, announces the general availability of Enterprise View Mobile, a mobile version of its dashboard software for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The Traverse City, Mich. company says it is the first mobile app for healthcare RTLS to appear in the iTunes App Store. More
February 4, 2011: The FDA officially grants Mobile MIM, a mobile radiology application, a 510(k) clearance. The app previously launched in 2008 as one of the first medical iPhone applications, but was withdrawn due to regulatory concerns. “The application is the first cleared by the FDA for viewing images and making medical diagnoses based on computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and nuclear medicine technology, such as positron emission tomography (PET),” the FDA states in a press release. The app enables clinicians to measure distance, intensity values, display measurement lines, annotations and regions of interest. The images are securely transferred to the app from a hospital or physician’s office through a secure network transfer facilitated by MIM. More
March 2, 2011: Apple launches the iPad 2, a thinner, lighter version of the popular tablet device, which now includes two cameras, a gyroscope, dual core A5 processor and more. A few minutes into Steve Jobs’ talk, a video is shown chronicling the iPad’s adoption and uptake in various vertical markets during the past year. The second “vertical” featured? Medicine. “Sometimes doctors are overwhelmed with data,” Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO Dr. John Halamka said during the video. “What we have tried to do with the iPad is to give doctors at the point of care the tools they need at the exact moment the doctor can make a difference. We’re finding with the iPad doctors are spending more times with patients. In fact, doctors are engaging patients by showing them images, showing them data on the screen. So it has empowered doctors to be more productive but it has also brought doctors and patients together.” More
April 8, 2011: Bulletin Healthcare digs into its user data recently and finds that three in ten of its healthcare professional readers access industry news from their mobile device. Between June 2010 and February 2011, mobile readership of Bulletin Healthcare’s daily email briefings rose 45 percent. Since the company’s subscribers account for about half the practicing physicians in the U.S., the data seems pretty compelling that doctors really are firing up their smartphones to stay current on the latest health news. More
April 19, 2011: Harvard Medical School encourages its students to take advantage of the growing number of mobile medical apps. While the school does not distribute devices to its students, they are instructed to bring their favorite devices to campus and HMS maintains licenses for apps that might be useful to its students. So which apps are most popular with HMS students? The school’s CIO conducts a survey to find out. More
April 27, 2011: A survey conducted by Aptilon, a pharmaceutical sales and marketing channel company, shows that by the end of this year about 61 percent of US physicians will be using iPhones. Overall, 84 percent of US physicians will have a smartphone of some kind, the poll of 341 “HCPs” or healthcare providers finds. Aptilon says the percent of US physicians who owned an iPhone at the beginning of 2011 was 39 percent. More
May 12, 2011: Telehealth services provider Teladoc announces plans to launch a group of iPhone and iPad medical apps for physicians that will enable them to collaborate using Apple’s FaceTime videocalling app. Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic announces the company’s plans during a presentation at the Wireless Life-Sciences Alliance (WLSA) Convergence Summit in San Diego. Teladoc offers consumers consultations with licensed physicians for routine medical issues. The visits are on-demand and can be scheduled any time — day or night — and any day of the week. More
May 23, 2011: According to an interview with the general manager of the MEMS division of STMicroelectronics, Benedetto Vigna, smartphones (prominently including the iPhone) will soon offer up a whole slew of new embedded sensors that could help to make mobile health services more accessible. Vigna, whose company creates sensors for mobile devices, told the New York Times that he expects more sensors to find their way into our mobile phones leading to even more medical, health and fitness applications. More
June 1, 2011: MIM Software launches an app for patients that enables them to view and share diagnostic images from their physicians with other caregivers or specialists. The app, called VueMe, is available for iPad, iPhone, and iPhone touch and follows MIM Software’s official launch of Mobile MIM. "Empowered patients want to view and control their own medical data – that is why we created the VueMe App," says Mark Cain, MIM Software’s Chief Technology Officer. "The iOS platform has continued to thrive with amazing market penetration, and with VueMe, we continue to benefit from the outstanding quality and innovative technology offered on devices such as the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.” More
June 6, 2011: Should health apps be as fun as Angry Birds? As apps become ever-increasingly popular, the question of fun content versus educational value arises. In an essay in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine supplement “Cyberinfrastructure for Consumer Health,” Dr. Jessie Gruman makes four observations about health information technology: new technology helps a lot but often demands more of patients; EHRs should be a high priority; patients need to play a role in development; and solutions need to be tested for usability more thoroughly. More
June 10, 2011: The U.S. Army begins testing iPhones, Android smartphones, and tablets for use in war starting next week, reports The Wall Street Journal. The tests, which include using the technology for surveillance, biometrics, mobile drone piloting and real-time updating of battlefield data, will take place at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and in Fort Bliss, Texas. The six-week testing period is part of a wider $4.2 million dollar evaluation of smartphone technology and applications for military use. More
