A rep from Kaiser Permanente captured the sentiment earlier this month when he said: It's easy to see how far behind the healthcare industry is on adopting technologies when a pilot using text messaging is labeled "innovation."
It's especially frustrating when a mobile phone--that clearly changed the way the world sees mobile phones--with nearly 1,000 healthcare, fitness and medical applications is ignored outright by many healthcare IT luminaries because it's popular (and easy) to say that all the healthcare applications available for the iPhone are "junk". Really? Out of 1,000 applications you know this? When probed many who claim to know all iPhone apps are junk will also admit they do not have an iPhone. I'd like to chalk this grievance up to the "eminence over evidence" crutch that Netspective CEO Shahid N. Shah has done well to root out over at The Healthcare IT Guy blog. The concept is that too many in the healthcare field use their eminence as the push of their argument rather than actual evidence of their point--"Trust me, iPhone applications for healthcare are junk." Too many 'trust me's, Shah has contended, may be one of the drivers behind much of the EBM talk as of late.
"The iPhone is the missing link between a good mobile solution and a (potentially) fully-loaded healthcare application platform," Parks Associates Director of Health & Mobility Research Harry Wang told mobihealthnews recently. "It's very exciting to have the iPhone and the AppStore providing users wellness-related personal care apps because they are easy to discover, download, and put on the phone." Wang exaplained that right now most of the healthcare apps are wellness and fitness apps, but you cannot remove those from the realm of healthcare or apps that actually help treat patients with acute care. "The big trend is moving toward helping patients prevent and manage," he continued. "Most of the iPhone applications are fitness-focused today, but that will change as phones begin to track vital signs like with biosensors like glucose monitors, ECGs and so on. Apps are being developed to do that and some already are out there."
Wang said that suping up the mobile phone to become a better preventative device is relatively easy on the hardware side. The software is the hard part: Developers need to make sure that vital signs are correctly captured, categorized and sent to the appropriate person for monitoring. Software developers can leverage their skills from producing other apps for entertainment, but when it comes to healthcare there is a different set of skills involved, too. Here are three best practices Wang offered up for iPhone healthcare developers:
1) Be aware of adding biosensor modules to the handset (through USB, for example), because you may need to increase process power, too.
2) When the sensor captures data, what format will it transfer the data in? Leverage known standards for healthcare data--don't add more formats to the fray and increase the fragmentation in the marketplace.
3) In most cases there will be a need to simplify the process of reviewing data. Do physicians really want a data dump of all of the user's vital signs? Maybe but maybe not. Same goes for users.
The opportunity for the iPhone and similarly capable phones to help physicians manage their workflow, check reference guides, read medical journals and more is already here--the applications await your download. The next generation of mobile applications that effectively monitor users' chronic conditions and vital signs while informing them on best practices for staying fit and healthy are on the way. So feel free to dig in and download today, but let's hold our tongues just a little longer on the "Trust me, iPhone healthcare apps are junk" talk, because whether Your Eminence knows it or not, there's an entire industry working to prove you wrong. -Brian
