October 13, 2011

Apple's apps for HCP: my opinion




A new section of Apple store dedicated to Health Care Professionals started in September.
We can find six cathegories of apps:
reference apps
educational apps
EMR & patient monitoring apps
imaging apps
point of care apps

The sixth cathegory, called personal care apps, is for consumers.
In this sections we can find many "must have" for anybody involved in health care, like PubMed On tap, and Micromedex Drug and iTriage.
I like iTriage even if it is focused on USA and many services are not working in Europe yet.
I already congratulated with the people who developed the app and I think that they are doing well in this "early stage" sector without having the investments of Google Health!
I like the Merk manual but it costs 27,99 euro.
I tested Muscle trigger points and I think that it can be useful for students and FKTR's.
Patients can benefit of iHealth BPM and Diabetes Buddy to keep on track fighting their chronic disease. Don't forget that diabetes and hypertension are the most terrible cardiovascular killers.
In the near future mobile apps for health care will be commonly used and I think that governative authorities should immediately play a central role helping developers in standardizing protocols, languages and data formats.
This will allows HCP to access patient's data everywhere and whenever is needed.
Governative authorities could also plan to use the "open data" generated by the people to promote research and population studies.

No comments: