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New Heart Rate Monitor Wirelessly Syncs To The iPhone

Post image for First heart rate monitor to utilize new bluetooth technology and iPhone sync hits the market

The start of January has some exciting new technologies on the horizon. Recently, Wahoo Fitness announced their new product, BlueHR — a fitness heart rate monitor — can sync to your iPhone 4s via bluetooth and without the need for addition adaptors.

All users have to do with the BlueHR device  is to strap it around their sternum, and they will be able to monitor stats such as their heart rate and the number of calories they are burning via their smartphone. It currently uses Bluetooth 4.0 technology, and as such, the only smartphone that currently has that capability is the iPhone 4S.

We wrote an in-depth article about Bluetooth 4.0 when the iPhone 4s was released, commenting on how it could be a boom for mobile health devices due to the following features of the protocol: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

FDA Asks For Input From Clinicians About Mobile Apps In Medicine

The publication in July of the FDA Draft Guidance on mobile medical apps was a major milestone in the evolution of mobile medicine. The blazingly rapid growth in interest among physicians, medical software publishers and device manufacturers has made it clear that the mHealth revolution will be a major turning point, not just in health information technology, but likely in many aspects of physician-patient interactions.

Last week (Sep 12-13), the FDA is held an important public workshop near its Washington DC headquarters to help it answer some key questions raised within the Draft Guidance and gather feedback from important stakeholders in mobile health. We are proud that iMedicalApps was invited to participate as one of the panelists.

We want to hear from you iMedicalApps readers – what do you want the FDA to consider in regulating mobile medical apps ?

Please add your voice in the comment section below and we will assemble them for submission to the official FDA docket on the Draft Guidance. Hurry because the deadline is just a few weeks away.

The FDA needs input from clinicians and others interested in mobile medicine and has identified two topics in particular as needing further specification:

  1. How to assess the risks inherent to clinical decision support software and
  2. How to classify mobile software that works in concert with a medical device.

FDA Workshop Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

Dexcom Releases Its First Application For Apple Products

I’m not hooked on Apple products (I refuse to get an iPhone because I’m addicted to my Blackberry), but Chris and I do love that foolish iPad.  And I love seeing apps for diabetes devices stocking the virtual shelves in the iTunes store. Makes me feel like we’re busting in to the mainstream, as a community.

Which is why I’m excited to see the first app from Dexcom.  (And it’s free … as these apps should be, in my opinion.)  While I’m hopeful that future apps include a way for the Dexcom receiver to transfer data to Mac products (because running parallels on my Mac is wicked annoying), this is a great start for people who are looking for introductory information on the Dexcom system. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*

Ivy League Medical Schools Embracing Technology For Teaching

Add Yale’s School of Medicine to the growing list of medical schools that are embracing the iPad as the primary source of medical teaching.

This upcoming year Yale will be giving their medical students, all 520 of them, an iPad 2 with an external wireless keyboard. We’ve covered with great depth the growing list of medical schools using iPads as the main tool for learning — such as Stanford, UC-Irvine, and many more.

“Yale School of Medicine this year will outfit all students with iPads and no longer provide printed course materials. The initiative, born out of a going-green effort, could Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

Medical Apps: To Come From A Hospital, Not An App Store?

research2guidance.jpgIn the future your medical apps might come from your hospital, not your app store. So says a recently published report by Research2Guidance, a mobile technology research company based in Germany. In their report, titled “Health Market Report 2010-2015″ the market researchers came to the conclusion that the dominant mode of application distribution in the future will be from doctors, hospitals and other care providers.

The report also painted a bullish picture of healthcare app adoption, estimating that the number of users of mHealth apps on smartphone phones will reach 500m by 2015. However, the revenue from this sector will still be driven mostly by device sales and through provision of services, rather than by paid downloads.

The report preview shows it to be organized into three “dimensions”: a) The smartphone market, b) The current state of the mHealth market & c) mHealth outlook to 2015. One would imagine that the last portion will be the most avidly read read as the numerous stockholders in mHealth — telecoms, device makers, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and entrepreneurs jockey to position themselves in this rapidly-evolving land grab. 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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