In less than a year the Veterans Affairs Medical Center hopes to enable its patients to use their own smartphones to "help speed up their diagnoses," associate chief of staff for informatics Divya Shroff told the Washington Examiner. Equipping the patient with access to the appropriate medical information is just the next step in a trial the VA has been conducting with mobile health firm mVisum and BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion:
"We are dealing traditionally with a patient population that has a lot of heart attacks," Shroff said. "When people have a certain type of heart [activity], they need to get to the cardiac catheterization lab [for surgery] within 90 minutes," or risk permanent damage, she said.
mVisum can send the EKG directly to the cardiologist's BlackBerry device. George Washington University Hospital was the first US hospital to test out the mVisum app followed by the VA Medical Center. The software costs the VA about $75,000, according to the Washington Examiner.
Shroff hopes to enable patients to use their mobiles to respond to surveys and watch educational videos about their treatment.
