Friday, June 26, 2009

Medical apps for the iPhone - how far have we come?

I was looking at the "Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) 2008 medical apps" video and I started thinking, "how far have we come since 2008?" When the Apple iPhone launched, there were very few medical applications out there. Epocrates launched their app and then many others quickly followed. Now, the iTunes store is full of free and paid medical apps. If we've made this much progress since 2008, how much more progress will we make over the next year?

6 comments:

  1. The growth of medical apps for the iPhone has been remarkable and can be expected to continue as long it remains a popular device among clinicians. In addition to the standalone apps, an interesting trend to follow will be the iPhone clients developed by the major HIT software vendors. Here's an impressive case study about how physicians at Doylestown Hospital are using iPhones to access clinical information in their Meditech EHR. http://www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/doylestown.html

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  2. I blogged about the Doylestown Hospital example here:
    http://www.medicalsmartphones.com/2009/06/doylestown-hospital-and-apple-iphone.html

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  3. in my opinion, the majority of the medical apps for the iphone are inadequate or useless.

    i hope they will get better, but they tend to be either way too targetted or merely serve as an iphone-centric reference source...

    http://twitter.com/medicalnews

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  4. @medicalnews The major stumbling block to useful apps for smartphone is the price point and marketing problems. Apple iPhone is one of the worst examples. They control the market and customers which also belong to them.

    Most customers think that an app over $5 dollars is ridiculous. The model does not support a successful business model.

    We produce a app for the iPhone, "motionPHR" a mobile Personal Health Record that sells for $9.95. It is fully encrypted, ICE (In Case of Emergency) feature and provides full off phone secure storage. We still have people say it is not enough for the price. The other problem is that Apple market is entertainment. Until this changes you will not see much more from the applications.

    Jeff Brandt motionPHR
    MyMotionMedBox for Android

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  5. Anonymous11:51 AM

    hope it will be useful: iPhone Medical Apps and News Aggregator
    http://iphonemedicalapps.com

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  6. Anonymous5:23 PM

    an interesting article "Is it possible to earn on medical apps for iPhone?"
    http://iphonemedicalapps.com/?p=330

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