Physician-only social network Sermo's Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Adam Sharp told attendees at the World Health Care Congress here in Washington D.C. that Sermo has no immediate plans to launch a mobile application for its 103,000 users. Sharp said he was impressed by the mobile apps out there for physicians already, though.

"We don't have any near-term strategies on mobile," Sharp explained after prompting from mobihealthnews. "But I think that there are some really good mobile technologies already out there for physicians, like applications for information for providing patient care. That's not something we're looking to pursue, because I don't see any reason to reinvent a very, very good wheel," Sharp said.

With that Sharp held us his iPhone and predicted that Sermo probably won't be tied down to desktops for long.

"I am sure at some point we will actually get on the iPhone," Sharp relented. "I'm a little biased -- I'm an iPhone junkie. At the office, we are an all Mac company, so I do anticipate that, at some point, one of our developers will get the itch to write an iPhone app. So we'll probably have more on that down the road."

During his presentation, Sharp shared an anecdote, which he admitted is now a staple of any Sermo powerpoint, where a doctor in a rural area posted a photo of a patients hand with a small saw blade stuck in it. The physician sought advice from the Sermo community about how to best remove the blade. Sharp said within minutes advice followed the physician's post and soon enough directions on how to make use of a plastic drinking straw to help extract the blade led to the successful completion of the procedure. 

While Sharp didn't note the opportunity, mobile phones offer real-time, anywhere, anytime communication. When a patient's hand is on the line, shooting a photo from a camera phone to the Sermo site could save a physician time while getting the word out. We'll keep you posted as to when Sermo goes down the road to anywhere mobile access.