After three months of rumors, details surrounding Epic Systems' partnership with Apple for a mobile phone-based electronic health record (EHR) application have come to light: Just a few days ago, Epic System's iPhone application, called Haiku, became available on Apple's AppStore.

"Haiku provides authorized clinical users of Epic's Electronic Health Record with secure access to clinic schedules, hospital patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes. Haiku also supports dictation and In Basket access. Haiku works on both the iPhone and iPod touch," according to the app's description on the AppStore.

"Your organization needs to license Haiku and be on Epic's Summer 2009 version and will determine the exact feature set and any applicable charges for your use of Haiku. If you are unsure whether you can use Haiku, please contact your administrative staff," the app description advises.

Last September, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Apple and Epic had been quietly conducting a trial at Stanford Hospital & Clinics, in Palo Alto, California to "test software that will let medical staff access patient charts on Apple’s iPhone." As the Haiku app description above makes clear, it does much more than that.

Epic has EHR contracts with the Cleveland Clinic, University of Chicago Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente, and Group Health Cooperative in Seattle among others. In total, Epic has won about 40 percent of the new contracts for EHRs at major hospitals, according to one estimate from research firm Klas Enterprises.

For a quick slide show of the screenshots that Epic made available, continue to the next page.