Mobile applications in Medicine

Smart phones and small hand held devices are making medicine safer and faster. They are being used to provide information, administrative and patient management services.And predictably, their use is shooting up.

Medical Media and marketing reports that about 80% of all US physicians will be using smart phones by 2012, and not just for drug reference or clinical information. An explosion of new healthcare professional-facing apps – over 1,500 in Apple’s app store alone – will expand mobile device usage to include patient care and administrative functions, according to Manhattan Research survey.

  

Half of the apps available in the Apple app store’s medical category are for medical reference, 9.3% of the apps are calculators, 7% of the apps are for EMR and operations, 3.4% are for prenatal and infant care, and 3% are for chronic disease management, including diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol and asthma management, according to a quantitative study on mobile health apps conducted by MobiHealthNews. Emergency information, medication adherence and CME apps make up a combined 4% of the total medical apps (roughly 24% of the apps in the medical category were labeled “other” or “miscatagorized”).

Apps exist for almost everything, and if its not there, Go build it.

Related articles

• The Medical Office of Today or Tomorrow (managemypractice.com)