August 6th, 2011 by Felasfa Wodajo, M.D. in News
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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*
August 3rd, 2011 by Berci in Announcements, News
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FDA has published an announcement about regulations regarding medical mobile applications.
The agency’s draft guidance defines a small subset of mobile medical apps that impact or may impact the performance or functionality of currently regulated medical devices. This subset includes mobile medical apps that:
a. are used as an accessory to medical device already regulated by the FDA
(For example, an application that allows a health care professional to make a specific diagnosis by viewing a medical image from a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) on a smartphone or a mobile tablet); or
b. transform a mobile communications device into a regulated medical device by using attachments, sensors or other devices
(For example, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
June 20th, 2011 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in News
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In a little seen nugget published in an article of the Chronicle, the Ivy League medical school, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, will be requiring their incoming medical students to use the Inkling e-book app for key medical textbooks in their first year of medical school.
They will be requiring their incoming first year class to purchase iPads as well.
We have been the first to report how and why Inkling is a game changer in the arena of medical e-books when we reviewed Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology:
Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology for the iPad allows you to highlight, write notes, view innovative multimedia modules, and easily search for content — taking what you can do on a paper based textbook to a higher level — and taking e-learning to a completely different stratosphere.
The three key Inkling textbooks that will be required by Brown University’s medical school: Essential Clinical Anatomy, Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy, and Bates’ Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking.
The medical school’s director of preclinical curriculum, Luba Demenco, had the following thoughts to share with the Chronicle on the iPad implementation into the curriculum: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
June 8th, 2011 by Jessie Gruman, Ph.D. in Health Tips
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I have been musing about why, despite our fascination with gadgets and timesaving devices, so few of us use the apps and tools that have been developed to help us take care of ourselves.
The range of options is staggering – my iPhone coughed up 52 applications for medication reminders just now – but most of us don’t make use of the (often free) high-tech help available to us. There are hundreds of websites and portals to help us monitor our diets, physical activity and blood sugar, talk to our doctors by e-mail and understand our test results. Apps can help us watch for drug interactions, unravel our test results, adjust our hearing aids and track our symptoms. Devices can monitor whether our mom is moving around her house this morning or continuously monitor our vital signs.
Interesting ideas. Modest pickup.
In an essay published in the May issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine supplement “Cyberinfrastructure for Consumer Health,” I make some observations about why this may be so, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
May 4th, 2011 by Medgadget in Health Tips, News
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“Are you a super-spreader?” That’s the catchphrase for a new study out of the University of Cambridge. However, if you answered “yes”, you may want to stay home and cover your mouth, because the study was designed to track the spread of influenza using cellular phone technology.
The study (and accompanying app) is called FluPhone, and it uses cell phones to collect information on social encounters within the study sample of participants in Cambridge. A phone’s Bluetooth antenna detects encounters with other participants and also records the proximity to each other. The built-in GPS chip tracks each user’s location, but this feature was disabled due to recent ethical concerns. Finally, the phone’s 3G/GPRS antenna sends all the proximity data automatically back to researchers for analysis. Other features include the ability to program a specific disease model by introducing a virtual “pathogen” which can be transmitted via Bluetooth when at least two users are near each other.
In addition to revealing useful data about the spread of disease and how to minimize its effects, the study could also be helpful for creating more effective public health messages.
More from the University of Cambridge: FluPhone: disease tracking by app…
Research project page…
FluPhone participant website…
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
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.
