Why does it seem like so many physicians have embraced the iPhone, but only 15 percent of them are using some form of electronic health record EHR technology? That’s one of the questions that Dr. David Kibbe posed to the audience at Healthcare Unbound here in Seattle, Washington.
Kibbe suggested a number of reasons for why physicians are adopting smartphones like the iPhone while shirking EHRs, but the most striking reason was accompanied by a drawing of Apple’s basic UI: A screen with a button that said Push. On the following slide Kibbe showed what he called the typical EHR user interface design: A big mess of buttons and blinking boxes, including a blinking box that lights up when there’s an error. Design and ease of use are crucial barriers to any new technology’s adoption and Kibbe is wise to point out this simple but important point.
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. Those apps would include remote monitoring apps, he said. Kibbe also predicted that in the beginning a number of EMR platforms will emerge and some of them will come from outside of traditional healthcare incumbents, but the ones to succeed will be the ones that create clinical groupware that is interoperable, substitutable, low-cost and low risk. Keep reading>>
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the West Wireless Health Institute will soon announce plans to conduct a clinical trial with Corventis, a remote heart monitoring company. Corventis makes use of a Band Aid-like wireless sensor-enabled patch that sends heart readings through Bluetooth to a patients’ iPhone or BlackBerry. The data is then transmitted to a physician’s office and the physician is alerted if any irregularities appear in the readings.
Kaiser Permanente’s Director of Internet Services, Kendra Markle told attendees at the Healthcare Unbound event here in Seattle that “wireless technology is revolutionizing health behavior change tools.” These tools can now reach people anytime, including during those moments directly before we make health-related decisions, she said. 
The Continua Health Alliance, a consortium of wireless and medical companies, which aim to create an interoperable ecosystem of medical devices and systems, has been busy this year. After announcing its first two Continua-certified products, the Alliance also announced two new wireless technologies for its Version 2 guidelines: ZigBee and Bluetooth Low Energy. Most of the devices under Continua’s purview are in the wheelhouse of wireless remote monitoring.
Epocrates prevents about one adverse drug event (ADE) per week for most physicians who use its mobile clinical software, according to a poll that the company recently conducted. Epocrates surveyed more than 2,000 physicians that use its mobile clinical reference app and 60 percent reported avoiding about one ADE a week and found the app more helpful than EMRs for actionable reference information.
The American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) may be a national nonprofit organization that represents 5,000 not-for-profit nursing homes, retirement communities, assisted living residences and senior housing communities, but it’s President and CEO said he still knows a thing or two about Twitter. AAHSA’s Larry Minnix told attendees at the Healthcare Unbound event here in Seattle, Washington that anyone who doesn’t believe that “small technologies” don’t have the power to change things needs to pay attention to what Twitter has done to provide a media outlet for coverage of the Iran elections and related protests.