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ER Doc Considers Some Of The Issues That Arise With iOS 5 In Emergency Medicine

I’ve been using my iPad in the ED, with my white coat’s sewn-in iPad-sized pocket, for some time now — mostly for patient and resident education, and to look up dosages or rashes. Hitting up my Evernote database or Dropbox documents is also useful. Occasionally I’ll use my iPhone, for its LED light (when the otoscope can’t reach to where I need to see) or rarely, its camera (in compliance with my hospital and department photo policy, naturally).

Our ED’s EHR isn’t quite accessible enough via iPad for me to quickly check results or place orders at the bedside — right now it’s just too cumbersome. But there’s been progress — enough so that I start to wonder about the flip side: instead of reviewing iOS medical apps and pining for an optimized EHR experience on the iPad, what if there are features of the iPad that could limit the utility of medical apps?

Well, there are some product design issues, like impact resistance and bacterial colonization, that have been discussed. But the operating system, iOS 5, has some quirks, too. Some have received a lot of attention. Some are maddening in their capriciousness. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Blogborygmi*

Interview With Ocra Health CEO: The Future Of The Company’s Interactive Health Apps

Post image for Orca Health crafts new level of sophistication in patient education apps, interview with CEO Matt Berry #mHS11

Orca Health has had quite a year. Launching their first app in in 2010, they now have a suite of ten apps with–we are promised–even more on the way. By combining stellar art work, three-dimensional interactive graphics and high-end native programming for the iPad, they have created and may well be en route to cornering the market for perioperative patient education apps.

Recent milestones for the company include winning the startup competition at Health 2.0 Europe, having two apps, EyeDecide & FootDecide, included in the iTunes App Store’s Apps for Healthcare Professionals. Until recently, Orca Health’s EyeDecide was ranked as the #1 downloaded free medical app on the App Store, and three other other apps (FaceDecide, BreastDecide & ENTDecide) are in the Top 25. To top it off, the iTunes App Store just included EyeDecide among the best the iPad / iPhone apps in its App Store Rewind 2011. It is interesting to think about the different places, and there are many, they could go from here.

Orca Health was among those selected for the StartUp Mobile Health Pavilion at the recent mHealth Summit (check out our full coverage), along with about two dozen other great mobile healthcare companies. There, I got to meet CEO & founder Matt Berry and publicist whiz Jake Lybbert (follow on Twitter). I talked with Matt about the (short) history and future of Orca Health, and his thoughts on the potential for tablets to improve the patient experience.

First, I have to ask – why the name Orca? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

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*

Health Care Is Stuck In The Past

We respond to certain “Code Blue” situations in our hospital. In the ED, of course, and in the outpatient areas and radiology, and if needed as back-up in the inpatient units. The hospital issues one of those overhead calls when there is a code blue — a cardiac arrest or other collapse, person down, injury, etc., but we also carry a pager in the ER in case we don’t hear the overhead call. The pager also signifies which doc is designated to respond to such a call, since we often have 8 docs working at once. It’s a little ritual we have at change of shift, passing off the pager and the spectralink phone, like the passing of the torch to the oncoming doc.

So of course I took the pager home the other day and had to make an extra trip to the hospital to return it. Ugh.

As I was driving back in, I took a moment to really look at the thing, and it struck me that this pager is the exact same model I used in medical school and residency, way back in the mid nineties. The exact same one: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*

Three Reasons Those In The Medical Field Lament The Passing Of Steve Jobs

Post image for Three reasons why doctors mourn the passing of Steve Jobs

Doctors love their Apple Products. Just walk into any hospital ward, and see the types of mobile devices we are using. At weekly Grand Rounds conferences, you see plenty of iPads in use. At physician meetings, the laptop of choice is often the Macbook Pro. The data backs these anecdotal examples as well.

Doctors love their Apple Products – and Steve Jobs was obviously an extension of these products, often times cited as the singular force behind these products, and it’s why physicians who love his products mourn his passing.

There are three specific reasons why :

1) Simplicity

In medicine, we deal with enough complexity. Knowing disease pathology and the mechanism of various illnesses and their treatments is a fascinating exercise, but it’s taxing. For every known in medicine, there are at least five unknowns. It’s what makes being a physician exciting, but stressful as well. We’re always on high alert – especially those of us who practice in the critical care arena.

Juxtaposed to this is Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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