Using SMS to remind heart transplant patients to take their meds

According to this story on MobiHealthNews, the Pediatric Heart Transplant Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital is using CareSpeak Communications to boost medication adherence in teenage patients who undergo a heart transplant. Medication adherence in critical in this population because you can't afford to risk organ rejection by missing doses of your meds.

These SMS reminders aren't simple one-way reminders. Patients will need to reply back, indicating that they've taken their pills. If they don't reply, then text messages will get sent to family members who will make sure that their teen takes the pills.

CareSpeak Communications develops wireless communications technologies for the institutional and consumer healthcare markets. Our main goal is to ensure that our products / services are efficacious, easy to use and affordable for the end user whether it is a patient, caregiver and/or health care professional.

Here's a video that shows you CareSpeak in action:

80% of all US physicians will be using smartphones by 2012

How many doctors are currently using smartphones? Here are some snippets from a recent story on Medical Marketing and Media:

• About 80% of all US physicians will be using smart phones by 2012, and not just for drug reference or clinical information... according to Manhattan Research survey.
• An explosion of new healthcare professional-facing apps - over 1,500 in Apple's app store alone - will expand mobile device usage to include patient care and administrative functions, according to Manhattan Research survey.
• A recent SDI survey found that iPhones were used most among docs using smart phones to access medical information.
• "Handheld devices are becoming more and more useful to physicians, partly because of the boom in physician-oriented apps and portable content," said Monique Levy, senior director of research at Manhattan Research.
• Creating smart phone apps for physicians makes a lot of sense, considering that docs have been using PDAs, with applications, for a long time, said  Jeannette Kocsis, SVP, digital marketing, at Harte-Hanks Direct. The mobile-optimized web is also important, said Kocsis, particularly because updates are managed by the website host, as opposed to a physician having to update an application.

Want more information about smartphone medical apps? Looking for a comprehensive market research report? You may wish to purchase the MobiHealthNews research report titled, "THE WORLD OF HEALTH AND MEDICAL APPS" here.