Better Health: Smart Health Commentary

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Need An Ultrasound? There’s An App For That

December 30th, 2010 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in Better Health Network, News, Research
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Imagine walking into the room of a patient with ascites and pulling out your iPad (which you were just using to put in orders on another patient), pulling an ultrasound probe out of your pocket, connecting the two, and finding a fluid pocket from which to drain the abdominal fluid.

We’ve already shown how iPad’s can be useful in the OR. Now they, along with other tablets and smartphones, can be applied to bedside diagnostics and therapeutics to enhance patient safety while reducing costs. It’s a pretty exciting prospect being put forth by an mHealth startup called Mobisante. And having won awards at an MIT Enterprise Forum as well as the Mobile Health Expo, others certainly seem to buying in as well.

Mobisante, an mHealth company based in Redmond, WA, has recently been showing a new smartphone peripheral at conferences across the country: An ultrasound probe. According to the MIT Technology Review, the current prototype connects to a Toshiba TG01 smartphone and was originally developed as a laptop peripheral by David Zar, a computer engineer at Washington University in St. Louis. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*

FDA Actively Monitoring Medical And Healthcare Apps

September 2nd, 2010 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion
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Bradley Merrill Thompson, an attorney with expertise in the FDA approval process for medical devices, is stating that the FDA is actively monitoring app stores on various platforms. Regulating medical devices and health care-related applications falls under the FDA’s jurisdiction.

James Kendrick from JkOnTheRun spoke with Thompson, where he stated the following:

The FDA is actively engaged in surveillance of various app stores to see if apps should trigger their involvement. Applications where a smartphone is connected in any way to imaging are under scrutiny, in particular. Any app that is used to transmit images to a medical facility requires FDA approval.

By “various app stores,” Thompson is likely referring to the App store [Apple], Palm App Catalog [Web OS], App World [BlackBerry], and the Android Marketplace [Android OS]. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*