These past few weeks the use of current evidence-based information regarding patient care has become a controversial topic. By definition, practitioners’ use of EBM is necessary to provide optimal care. This fact has been demonstrated repeatedly with measurable clinical results. Recently, services offering well-maintained databases on PDAs and desktops have become especially popular with large, teaching hospitals – known for being the early adopters of most great medical advances. (mobihealthnews, of course, believes this information should be available at practitioners’ fingertips via PDAs and mobile devices.)
A recent study by Bonis, Pickens, Rind, and Foster (2008) examined the health impacts of the use of a evidence-based clinical knowledge support system. They selected four outcomes well-established in the literature: complications, length of stay, mortality, and patient safety. While accounting for hospital characteristics, Bonis, et. al. found that subscribing hospitals had less complications, shorter lengths of stay, and fewer patients safety issues than hospitals without subscriptions. These results were statistically significant and persisted regardless of whether the use of the support system was considered dichotomously or continuously (hits per week on the support system website). Mortality rates did not differ.
Remember the iShoe? Last summer a NASA intern and MIT graduate student invented an insole with sensors that monitored and transmitted information about a person’s balance, which provided for an early warning system before someone falls. At the time iShoe was in a pilot phase with about 60 trial users, but now, according to OhioHealth, which is testing the technology, iShoe will commercially launch next year. Price tag? $100. Better yet, OhioHealth reports it should be covered by most insurance companies.
Erez Lieberman’s iShoe contains pressure sensors, a built-in memory and a wireless Bluetooth radio that transmits the data to a laptop or mobile phone. Lieberman planned to eventually have that data routed online for a balance assessment, but Ohio Health did not report on whether the assessment functionality is live yet. Future iterations of iShoe also hope to include some way to stimulate feet in attempt to avoid a fall or sound an alarm that could help the wearer realize they are about to fall down.
According to the Alanta-based Center for Disease Control, one in three people 65-years-old and older fall each year, and more than 300,000 hip fractures occur each year, mostly caused by falls. Also, one in five people die within a year of breaking their hip. Read more over at OhioHealth and watch this CNN video about iShoe from last year below:
Edge Health, a start-up based in Richmond, British Columbia recently signed a multi-million dollar deal with AllScripts to embed the company’s electronic health record (EHR) into its suite of software applications. Macnewsworld just found out the two companies are working on another mobile app: Remote Practice Management. Here’s the background on EdgeHealth.
Founded in the summer 2007, Edge Health, which has about 10 employees, currently offers five applications:
EdgeDR: Enables digital radiography for the iPhone. An app for dentists looking to view dental X-rays on-the-go. EdgeMD – An app aimed at small-to-large clinics with multiple providers. Helps with billing, scheduling, demographics and 2-D and 3-D digital radiography. EdgeDMS – Just like EdgeMD but intended for use in dental offices. Clinical ChartBook — Lets doctors and dentists take any form, chart or image and mark it up with a digital pen. EdgeEHR — An electronic health record.
Edge Health is working on another iPhone app, which will leverage its recent partnership with AllScripts: EdgeRPM.
“It’s one of the slickest mobile phone apps you’ll ever see,” Edge Health CEO Spracklin said. “It’s a remote practice management tool for the iPhone that allows physicians to tap into their office networks. We just showed it to the Apple folks, and it should be available some time in March.”
David Doherty over at the 3G Doctor blog has an extensive round-up on mHealth news, launches and product demos from the Mobile World Congress show that took place in Barcelona last month. Key finding: mHealth solutions for the developing markets dominated the event’s mHealth buzz (probably because of the mHealth Alliance announcement), while developed market solutions took a backseat. Doherty had a number of other insights:
> “Whilst there was a lot of consensus that mHealth is a huge opportunity just waiting to happen – where are all the entrepreneurial Healthcare professionals who are going to make this happen? If anything the medical industry had less presence this year than in 2008 when there was a medical technology provider (Medical Intelligence) exhibiting and working paramedics were talking about their experiences at the conference.” This is disappointing to hear but it may be more of a reflection on travel budgets than the mHealth industry.
> “In 2009 the talk about mHealth seemed to have moved from the developed to the developing world,” Doherty writes. “Nick Hunn [writes] in his excellent blog, ‘The developing world is not alone in having people who cannot afford healthcare. If we open our eyes we’ll find them living in every country in the world.’”
> Doherty then goes on to explain the developing market focus “jars” him a little because there is a strong argument “against aiding health projects in the developing world that are unproven and potentially unsustainable because of the further fragmentation in care that they can cause (eg. when donations run out patients may be worse off than if their naturally developing health systems hadn’t been interfered with in the first place) but from conversations I came away with the distinct impression that the mobile industry is keen to encourage mHealth experimentation (sometimes with untested and unlicensed services) to encourage adoption by the worlds most economically disadvantaged, vulnerable and unrepresented.”
While sprawling, the post is a must-read for anyone interested in keeping up with the latest in mHealth. Doherty also quickly summarizes products on display from companies including NTT DoCoMo, Alcatel-Lucent, CardioNet, Giant Electronics, Oberthur, CuteCircuit, Qualcomm and more. Plenty of pictures, too. Check it out.
Lab Soft News, a blog presented by the Pathology Education Consortium (PEC), which describes the publication as an “Idea Factory for Pathology Informatics and the Clinical Laborator” has a lengthy post on the popularity of the iPhone’s camera. PEC’s president, Bruce Friedman MD wrote that the iPhone’s camera is ranked as the fifth most popular one used to upload photos to the very popular Flickr service. Friedman said the statistic was “fascinating.” One of his readers started a discussion about whether he’d use the iPhone to diagnose pathological diseases–I asked whether there would ever be a situation where he’d need to or want to do use an iPhone to do diagnose pathological diseases.
“We wanted to make the fitness tracking experience cool, fun, simple and custom,” Michael C. Williams, founder and CEO of iTMP Technology told Reuters in a recent interview. ”We did it by leveraging the iPhone’s technology.”
iTMP’s product is called SM Heart Link, which is a “wireless bridge” that can collect data from wireless sensors like heart rate chest straps or cycling sensors on bikes and send them to an iPhone for display and tracking.
“There are dozens of fitness apps on the iPhone but none of them, until now, employ heart rate monitors or other sensors.” Williams said. Williams explained that the application can break down users’ calorie expenditures by fat and carbs, based on the users’ metabolic rates. The app might be free, but the SM Heart Link itself is $155, and you need to get the sensors and iPhone elsewhere.
Still, the product shows great promise for iPhone modules and mHealth, particularly for the consumer fitness and preventative care market.
UPDATE: Original headline was inaccurate. The product does not claim to interface with biosensors (it may someday) but only sensors that collect biometrics. Thanks to John Moore of Chilmark Research for the distinction.
Edge Health, a start-up based in Richmond, British Columbia 
David Doherty over at the 3G Doctor blog has an extensive round-up on mHealth news, launches and product demos from the Mobile World Congress show that took place in Barcelona last month. Key finding: mHealth solutions for the developing markets dominated the event’s mHealth buzz (probably because of the mHealth Alliance announcement), while developed market solutions took a backseat. Doherty had a number of other insights:
“We wanted to make the fitness tracking experience cool, fun, simple and custom,” Michael C. Williams, founder and CEO of iTMP Technology 
“There are dozens of fitness apps on the iPhone but none of them, until now, employ heart rate monitors or other sensors.” Williams said. Williams explained that the application can break down users’ calorie expenditures by fat and carbs, based on the users’ metabolic rates. The app might be free, but the SM Heart Link itself is $155, and you need to get the sensors and iPhone elsewhere. 