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FDA Actively Monitoring Medical And Healthcare Apps

Bradley Merrill Thompson, an attorney with expertise in the FDA approval process for medical devices, is stating that the FDA is actively monitoring app stores on various platforms. Regulating medical devices and health care-related applications falls under the FDA’s jurisdiction.

James Kendrick from JkOnTheRun spoke with Thompson, where he stated the following:

The FDA is actively engaged in surveillance of various app stores to see if apps should trigger their involvement. Applications where a smartphone is connected in any way to imaging are under scrutiny, in particular. Any app that is used to transmit images to a medical facility requires FDA approval.

By “various app stores,” Thompson is likely referring to the App store [Apple], Palm App Catalog [Web OS], App World [BlackBerry], and the Android Marketplace [Android OS]. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

Kids With Diabetes Can “Count Carbs With Lenny”

Medtronic MiniMed has recently released a new educational game for kids and young adults that takes them through an educational tour to learn how to deal with foods when you have diabetes.

A rep for the company tells Medgadget:

Called Carb Counting with Lenny, it’s offered for free download on the Apple iTunes App Store for the iPhone, iTouch and iPad. It’s great for parents (and even adults with diabetes have enjoyed it too), as the app features a guide presenting nutritious food choices with associated serving sizes and carbohydrate values. The other key components of the app are fun, interactive games that help reinforce carb counting skills and keep children engaged. And just in case you are not fully familiar with Lenny the Lion, he is a global ambassador for children’s diabetes education.

What’s more, there’s a contest with prizes for those who can beat Lenny at the app’s carb counting games.

Link: Carb Counting with Lenny!

Contest Rules….

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

What Doctors And Patients Can Learn From Apple And Steve Jobs

First, I am a big admirer of Apple CEO Steve Jobs for his thoughtful 2005 Stanford commencement speech, his clarity of vision, and his superb skills as a leader. Fortune magazine named him CEO of the decade after turning around the company he founded from near bankruptcy in the late 1990s to becoming the most valued company today. Though I have great respect for him, I haven’t bought an Apple product, ever, until this year.

So I watched with great interest his press conference regarding Antennagate which has consumed technology news with regards to the design of the new iPhone 4 and its new antenna design. Apparently this makes the smartphone vulnerable to dropping phone calls when held a certain way, known as the death grip. If one simply avoided holding the phone that one explicit way, the phone otherwise worked fine. As a result, 22 days after the latest iPhone was available to the public, Jobs and Apple were instead addressing an issue which dwarfed their latest product launch.

Doctors and patients can learn plenty by watching Jobs’ approach to the problem, because the situation he and his team were tackling is similar to what a doctor addresses daily in the office. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*

How Will The iPad Fare In Healthcare?

Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBaseThe first iPad reviews are out, and they’re very positive. Here’s a selection of the reviews (compiled by MacRumors):

And here’s a roundup of recent medical blogs commentary on the iPad:

iMedical Apps has a nice review of how 5 medical apps might appear on the iPad, including the Blausten Human Atlas, Visual Dx Mobile, Procedures Consult, OsiriX and eFilm, and Papers.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog features a review of Carter’s Encyclopedia of Health and Medicine, an app designed specifically for the iPad. (This is not an eBook, but a full app with searchable interactive skeletons, etc.)

CareCloud, a new cloud-based EHR, plans to have an iPad version. Epic already has an iPhone app and presumably will have an iPad version available. Allscripts is rumored to have an upcoming EHR for the iPad. (No word on whether other EHRs plan on having an iPad app. If you have any information, please post a comment.)

According to Macworld, 1 in 5 doctors plan to buy an iPad. The Practice Fusion Blog has a discussion of other iPad-related surveys of doctors and healthcare professionals.

Healthcare Technology Online has a discussion of the pros of cons of the iPad in healthcare. Read more »

This post, How Will The iPad Fare In Healthcare?, was originally published on Healthine.com by Joshua Schwimmer, M.D..

Using The iPhone To Track Medical Procedures

If it’s free, it’s for me. Especially if it’s an iPhone application to track medical procedures:

That’s why Dr. Shanti Bansal developed a free iPhone application — “app” in Apple-talk — that lets doctors keep a record of each case and which procedure, from a cardiac MRI to a biopsy, they perform. “The goal is to help physicians in training be the best physicians they can,” said Bansal, who practices at Yale-New Haven Hospital. “One of the reasons I came up with this is that I’m a cardiologist and in cardiology we do a lot of procedures. I lost track of hundreds of procedures during my first and second year” of residency. Now, in about 30 seconds, each procedure can be entered into the iPhone.

Here’s the link to ProcedureTracker.com.

-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

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