Will doctors stick by Palm?

By: Brian Dolan | Apr 20, 2009        

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Palm PreDespite reports that twice as many doctors have iPhones this year than last year, a post over at WirelessDoc predicts that since many doctors have all their contact data and text files on the Palm Desktop software a good number will continue to carry Palm branded devices. That’s good news for the Palm Pre. 

Dr. Bill Koslosky over at WirelessDoc writes: “I’ve seen a couple of posts on the mostly inactive palm-med listserv about MDs looking to replace their old Palm Tungsten PDAs as the batteries no longer keep a charge. They have all their contact data and text files on the Palm Desktop software, but need a new handheld to re-sync.”

Certainly anecdotal, but it makes sense. By many accounts the Palm Pre is the first true contender in the iPhone era, and those Palm Tungsten PDA batteries are not removable — no option but to upgrade.

“Of course, the Palm Pre and the new WebOS are about to be released,” Koslosky writes. “I’m switching. I’ll lose the third party apps that I’ve enjoyed using on my Treo 700p like Agendus, but I’m willing to move on. I’m hoping that porting the old data to the new OS won’t be much of a problem.”

According to a new report from Manhattan Research, the percentage of physicians in the U.S. using smartphones increased to 64 percent. The group increased by 20 percent between 2008 and 2009, the study found. The number of physicians using iPhones doubled, Manhattan Research found.

Read the WirelessDoc post for more thoughts from Koslosky.

UPDATE: This article was posted over at Pre Forums and it sparked some good discussion. Read more here

ALSO: Scott Farmer from AAI writes in the comments below that for doctors looking to hang onto their old Palm devices, there is help for replacing those batteries, after all. See the comments for more…

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Continua: TV box could be mHealth home hub

By: Brian Dolan | Apr 20, 2009        

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Continua Health AllianceThe Continua Health Alliance’s Executive Director Chuck Parker moderated a few sessions at the World Health Care Congress last week in Washington D.C. and also gave a brief presentation on the Alliance’s mandate. Interestingly, Parker revealed that Continua is considering the television set-top box as one potential hub for wireless health devices.

Continua is an organization created as a non-profit, open industry alliance that is working to create interoperability for connecting personal health monitoring devices. The end goal is to create an “ecosystem for health and fitness” devices, Parker said.

Worldwide there are about one billion adults overweight right now and 860 million people with chronic diseases, Parker said. About 600 million are 60 years old or older, he said.

Our current healthcare system does not help us maintain health moving forward, Parker explained, it doesn’t allow us to track healthy lifestyles. Besides those with chronic conditions and the elderly, Continua wants to help “the worried well” keep track of their lifestyle choices and basic biometric data like: weight, blood pressure, glucose levels, cholesterol, activity levels and vital signs.

In the future, Continua hopes to enable the extension of healthcare into the home where initial triage of non-emergency conditions could take place and could be supported by images, email, chat and video. Keep reading>>

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Where’s the mHealth investment in emerging markets?

By: Brian Dolan | Apr 20, 2009        

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mHealth Alliance

Photo Credit: Datadyne.org

Last week Vital Wave Consulting noted that a number of large technology vendors have made investments in mobile health initiatives for developed markets. Vital Wave pointed out that the timing was probably meant to coincide with the U.S. government’s plan to invest $20 billion into modernizing healthcare. GE and Intel recently announced a joint $250 million investment over the next 5 years to develop remote patient-monitoring devices, a market the companies expect to grow to $7.7 billion in three years. Qualcomm also recently announced support to sponsor The West Wireless Health Institute in San Diego to support the development of wireless sensing applications and help other wireless health products get to market.

Vital Wave Consulting lamented that the announcements by Qualcomm, GE/Intel, and previous ones made by Microsoft and Google are “curiously confined to mature markets”. Government investment in the U.S. system aims to manage healthcare costs, an aging population and care for chronic conditions. Drivers of remote healthcare in emerging markets include, the need for better healthcare in remote areas and the goal of initiating– not just fixing– comprehensive and efficient health records.

“The companies that achieve the most mileage out of their healthcare investments,” the consulting firm writes, “will be those that consider mature and emerging markets in tandem, and if necessary develop specific solutions for each market.”

Vital Wave Consulting helps the Vodafone Foundation and UN Foundation Technology Partnership manage the recently announced mHealth Alliance.

For more, read the Vital Wave Consulting post here.

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Mobile app calculates x-ray exposure

By: Brian Dolan | Apr 17, 2009        

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Canadian radiologist Dr Mark Baerlocher partnered with Tidal Pool Software to develop an iPhone application that estimates a person’s exposure to radiation from X-ray machines, CT scans and other known sources, according to a report from medGadget. The app, called Radiation Passport, costs about $3 and crunches metrics the user enters in about their lifestyle and medical tests taken — then, it provides an exposure and risk assessment.

X-Ray Exposure AppFor more on Radiation Passport be sure to visit the application’s info page at Tidal Pool Software’s site.

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NY Pediatrician first to use Allscripts iPhone EMR

By: Brian Dolan | Apr 17, 2009        

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allscriptsA pediatrician in Sarasota Springs, NY is the first user of the EMR iPhone application Allscripts announced at the HIMSS event last week, according to a report in Healthcare Informatics. As we reported last week, the application allows clinicians to access Allscripts’ EHR at any time from an iPhone or iPod Touch. The app includes a patient’s medical summary: history, lab results and medications. It also lets users communicate with local emergency rooms and includes e-prescribing functionality.

The pediatrician is with Community Care Physicians, PC, a physician-owned and governed multispecialty medical group of 200+ physicians and other clinical providers. The group is based in four counties in the Albany, N.Y. area.

“Physicians are quick to adopt technology that delivers clear benefits to their patients while making their own lives easier, and Allscripts Remote delivers on both counts,” Glen Tullman, CEO of Allscripts stated in the company’s press release that announced the launch of the EMR app. “For any physician who uses iPhone or plans to, there’s no better way to connect to real-time information and new capabilities that not only make it easier for them to make informed clinical decisions, but save them time. It’s all about connecting.”

The press release also compared the launch of the iPhone EMR app to the launch of BlackBerry email service years ago: “Just as the Blackberry was designed to maximize email access, so Allscripts remote takes advantage of iPhone graphical capabilities to provide fast, easy access to the Electronic Health Record.”

Check out the original report in Healthcare Informatics here.

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Motorola: Mobiles save clinicians 39 mins/day

By: Brian Dolan | Apr 17, 2009        

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Health Populi has a post today reviewing Motorola’s Mobility Barometer report that the company shared at the HIMSS event last week. One of the key takeaways from the report: Hospital worker productivity increases after certain mobile applications are adopted. Workers get back about 39 minutes per day on average.

According to Motorola, the key benefits of adopting mobile applications in the hospital are reduced manual errors, increased order fulfillment accuracy, increased productivity, increased accuracy in compliance, quality reporting and regulatory requirements. Key challenges include the cost of hardware, software, integration an support; difficulties integrating mobile apps into existing infrastructure; and interference and performance problems.

Health Populi suggests that challenges need to be overcome through innovative pricing, SaaS, and milestone-reaching arrangements. The publication also reminded readers that security and integration are the deal breakers and makers for health organizations.

During a presentation at HIMSS Motorola’s Vivian Funkhouser shared some of the findings of the Mobility Barometer report: While research shows that healthcare IT adoption has plodded along for years when it comes to mobile communications adoption, the report also demonstrated that the infrastructure and communications group of wireless health services — like using mobile devices to improve efficiencies in care at clinics — has finally reached a tipping point. Keep reading>>

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