January 3rd, 2012 by Nicholas Genes, M.D., Ph.D. in Opinion
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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*
December 24th, 2011 by Felasfa Wodajo, M.D. in Interviews
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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*
November 3rd, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Opinion
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Next week, it will be my turn to write our article for the Clinical Psychiatry News website. Over there, we try to have our writing more specifically aimed at an audience of psychiatrists. I’m going to be writing an article on Siri and the Psychiatrist….in honor of my new iPhone 4s and the “personal assistant” function named Siri. Okay, I’m obsessed. Everyday, I find new things it can help me with. Today, I asked it, “What’s the meaning of life.” What, you don’t ask your cell phone the finer existential questions? Siri answered, “All available evidence suggests chocolate.” Wow! How old is Liza Minelli? 65 years, 7 months, 20 days. Calculate a tip? No problem. Convert Celius to Fahrenheit? A cinch. And she takes dictation. “Siri, please text Patient A Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
October 5th, 2011 by Felasfa Wodajo, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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As we discussed in the first of this two part series, mobile devices are already entering the world of the surgeon. Currently, it is mostly downloadable apps that promise to help surgeons with the informational portions of their tasks, such as tracking the cases they have done, e.g. Surgichart or helping in the consent process, e.g. Surgery Risk
While apps that are dedicated to the technical aspects of surgery, such as the excellent AO Surgery Reference, are becoming available, in the future we will see the iPad (or its brethren) actually in the operating room. Why ? Because the iPad has many characteristics that make it a great an advanced surgical instrument.
First is its small size. Every modern operating room has stacks of electronic equipment hanging from the ceiling or in large cabinets for patient monitoring and controlling in-field devices. Since the iPad already supports a bevy of standard wireless communication protocols, many of these large boxes’ functions could likely be off-loaded to an iPad with clever engineering. One immediate advantage would be that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
September 27th, 2011 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in News
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There are a variety of tools available to help Ophthalmologists with eye examinations. A new hardware and medical apps solution turns the iPhone into an ophthalmoscope. Called the iExaminer, this simple iPhone 4 peripheral connects the popular Welch Allyn PanOptic ophthalmoscope to the iPhone 4, and then a native medical app helps you perform a fundus exams and share videos and images right from the iPhone.
Two key applications for this:
1) Teaching: For medical schools that are teaching eye examinations — instead of having to look at static pictures of eye anatomy, this “live view” could be an optimal and innovative way to teach. This could also be a great way for an ophthalmology attendings to save key eye pathology that they visualize in the mobile setting for teaching purposes.
2) Use in mobile clinics: This could be a good screening tool for various eye pathology — Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
