mobile health

launch of USDA’s partnership with the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition to provide free mobile health information through the text4baby initiative to pregnant women and new moms, including participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

The main focus of the app is physician communication, and for this it incorporates an innovative, secure SMS-like text service. But its real power lies in its deep incorporation of multiple databases of physician and related information

In particular, the makers of the app carefully integrated data from the physician NPI and Medicare databases as well as lists of medical schools, hospitals, imaging centers and pharmacies

What they’ve produced is a surprisingly refined version 1 product that can quickly answer the myriad of small, practice-related questions that pop up all day long during a busy schedule.

Patient Journal, which is free, offers a way for families and patients to track the important elements of a hospital stay, and possibly enhance the interaction between the medical staff and patients and family members.

"Physician smartphone adoption is occurring more rapidly than with members of the general public," said Gregg Malkary, managing director of Spyglass Consulting Group. "Physicians are showing a clear preference for using the Apple iPhone (44 percent) over the RIM Blackberry (25 percent)."

At the US Open of Surfing, teams of young women hired by the Oral Cancer Foundation for three days handed out creatively worded stickers, T-shirts, and even temporary tattoos, all bearing a special QR code to the crowd. When beach-goers scanned the code with their smart phones, they were taken to a specially designed web page informing them that oral cancer can be caused by the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus, the risk factors for it, and what they could do to avoid the cancer it can cause.

the focus is on health and not illness ~ it’s wellness driven, the focus on the individual and not medical providers ~ it’s consumer driven.

Nimble incorporates throwback features from ClearPractice's software-as-a-service EMR software, which has been around since 2006 and includes scheduling, tracking inpatient rounds, prescribing meds, and reviewing/ordering lab results. But it is updated with not only an iPad-specific user interface, but a series of additional fields, such as Name, Location, Admit Date, Floor, Bed, Admission Status, and Claim Status.

To comply with the federal HIPAA Privacy Rule, data is not stored on individual devices; physicians can use the iPad's Wi-Fi or 3G network to connect to the Nimble cloud and access records. Nimble also connects to the company's Web-based SaaS billing system to submit payment charges.

This project is using mobile field data collection techniques to identify gaps in health services to enable more effective and equitable delivery of scarce health resources to remote and poor regions. 

A short video introducing this project can be seen here: http://healthpslp.cdu.edu.au/video/health_VIDEO.html

About two-thirds of doctors using their smartphones in the course of a practice day said they could not connect the devices to a practice or hospital electronic medical records system. The report notes that such a barrier is keeping physicians from using their smartphones as much as they would like, particularly in tasks such as patient monitoring.

iPod started becoming utilized in treating children with speech problems.

Parents are always encouraged to practice with their children at home to supplement the services of the speech therapist. Mobile Articulation Probes provides a very easy way for parents to practice with their children at a very affordable price ($29.99).

The results can be e-mailed to their child’s speech therapist to follow up with the treatment. On the other hand, if this application is being used by speech therapists the words that the child is not producing appropriately can be e-mailed to the parents for daily practice at home.

Top 6 Reasons Why You Need This: Efficiently leverage the technology that’s already the hands of yourself and other learners Wireless web camera for $4.99 (the price of the app) Use it to showcase augmented reality in your classroom

Display video all across the network, which would excellent cross-curricular teaching opportunities No need for jailbreaking to use this Unique from video broadcasting apps on the iPhone – this app actually makes your PC recognize your iPhone as a web camera

Mobile interactive technology (such as texting) has great potential to reach users with limited health literacy skills, and the team at ODPHP is actively exploring how we can use mobile to communicate important health messages. Recent mobile campaigns, such as TXT4BABY and KNOWIT have shown promise in this regard.

That said, the digital divide is still very much a reality and more research is needed to assess the reach and impact of mobile health

EPG Health Media published a comprehensive and interesting report on smartphone use in healthcare (How do smartphones impact healthcare professionals and infuence the way they practice?) which is actually a great comparison between Europe and the United States.

(81% of US respondent doctors already own a smartphone device with ownership set to grow to 94% within 6 months).