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Extraordinary Growth Predicted In Health And Fitness Apps

Post image for Health and fitness apps expected to grow to $400 million, according to ABI research

A recent report by ABI Research, providing a broad overview of the mHealth industry, predicts extraordinary grown in health and fitness apps over the next five years.

The report, Mobile Devices and mHealth, includes forecasts for the next five years on factors such as regional smartphone adoption rates, app downloads, and wearable device usage among others. One major conclusion from the report is that the sports and health mobile application market will grow to over $400 million in 2016 – up from just $120 million in 2010.

Mobile health devices recently received a major boost with the incorporation of Bluetooth 4.0, which is expected to spur the development and launch of devices that will take advantage of the lower energy consumption. While much interest is focused on blood glucose monitors, remote monitoring of cardiac rhythms, and other similar parameters, one conclusion of this report is that some of the most impressive growth will be in health and fitness apps that are more directly consumer-oriented.

The report itself, for a rather hefty price, also addresses other questions like Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

Track Your Sleep Patterns With Your Phone

Sleep tracking company Zeo has announced today that they’ll soon be selling a mobile version of their product, compatible with both iOS and Android.  The company previously only offered what amounted to a base-station clock with a sleep monitoring  headband. Together they tracked your sleep patterns, including Light, Deep, and REM, but in the process the data got a bit trapped in their clock. To upload sleep data to the web for easier analysis, users had to pull an SD card out of the clock, plug it to a computer, and complete the upload. This step presented a pretty high barrier to learning about your personal sleep.

The mobile version solves this Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Android, iPhone And iPad Being Tested For Medical Use On The Battlefield

I was always under the impression that medical documentation was reserved for the office and the hospital.  Not necessarily so — even in the battlefield, medics document medical care in real time.

Unfortunately, the tools they use to do this documentation consists of bulky Motorola hand held devices that are four years old.

Four years is an eternity in the tech world.  To put this in perspective, I was still rocking a Motorola RAZR back then.  So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Army is field testing the iPhone, iPad, and Android smartphones in the battlefield. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

New App Allows Physicians To View High Quality, Interactive Medical Images

Fujifilm Synapase Mobility is now available in the U.S., and not just on the iPhone, but for the Android and iPad as well.  Fujifilm makes a variety of medical images devices, from ultrasound devices to computed radiology devices (x-rays).

If you use their backend server (Synapse PACS and Synapse RIS), you can now view your images on your mobile devices. What’s really interesting about their mobile suite is that it’s browser is independent, scalable, and doesn’t just display static images.

Currently the system isn’t FDA approved, but with the amount of business Fujifilm already has in the medical ecosystem, one would think this would happen sooner than later.

..It provides Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

More Specialty-Specific Apps Are Coming On The Market

The explosive growth of medical applications for smartphones, launched by the  debut of the innovative Apple iTunes App store in 2008, promises to fundamentally change the physician’s tool set. While many specialties have always been heavily dependent on technology, such as radiology and cardiology, the ubiquity of these small, interconnected computers means that every physician will soon have access to a broad array of software and hardware to help them perform their daily work.

At iMedicalApps.com, we have been reviewing the most interesting medical apps on the market today as well as watching for trends in mobile medical technology. The most popular categories thus far have been clinical reference and utility apps.  Some of the largest download numbers have been for apps that provide drug and disease reference information, such as the encyclopedic Medscape app, or medical calculators.

However, more targeted apps that are specialty specific are slowly coming on the market. Some early ones, not surprisingly, Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

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