ChiroTouch, a San Diego-based vendor of integrated electronic health records and practice management software for chiropractors, has released three native iPad apps, two of which are intended for patient use.

One, CT Provider Interface, gives chiropractors remote access to patient records, including treatment plans, SOAP notes and images.

The CT Patient Intake app records patient history, demographic and insurance information on iPads in the clinic waiting room, eliminating the need for the hated clipboard and associated paper forms. All the data are fed into the practice's ChiroTouch server so office staff don't have to key in data themselves.

The third offering, CT Outcomes Assessment, also is a self-service iPad app – also available as a Web portal – that walks patients through a series of questions to assess their pain and injuries. This saves the chiropractor time at the beginning of each office visit and shifts some of the onus for data collection from the practitioner to the patient. The app also creates narratives that can go directly into the EHR or produce reports for measuring outcomes and managing population health.

This reporting feature is a key component of the federal "meaningful use" EHR incentive program. The ChiroTouch EHR is certified to Stage 1 meaningful use standards, and the company says many of its customers already have received their Medicare and/or Medicaid bonus payments.

A company spokesman tells MobiHealthNews that all three apps offer seamless, instantaneous integration with the core EHR/practice management system.

As a chiropractic software package, ChiroTouch doesn't get a lot of coverage in the physician- and hospital-focused health IT press, but it has been around in some form since 1999. Parent company Integrated Practice Solutions ranked 1,384th on the Inc. 5000 list for 2011, with $6.1 million in revenues in 2010 and three-year growth of 206 percent.