With over 100,000 apps available for the iPhone/iPod Touch and billions of downloads since the App Store opened just under two years ago, the market is clearly hot. And with the release of the iPad, expect a new flood of apps into the market.  However, a recent article in the New York Times suggests that even with the wealth of options, people generally use only five apps despite having downloaded far more.

The average iPhone or iPod Touch owner uses 5 to 10 apps regularly, according to Flurry, a research firm that studies mobile trends. This despite the surfeit of available apps: some 140,000 and counting.

Another finding that the article notes is that even thought hundreds of thousands of apps are available, the entire user group is generally exposed to the same few thousand apps.

A survey of iPhones, iPod Touch and Android users conducted in July 2009 by AdMob, an advertising network that helps people promote their applications on smartphones, found that people discover apps most often by browsing app stores. And even though the iTunes store is bloated with offerings, people tend to gravitate to the most popular….

“…The top apps featured at the store do change out,” Mr. Putney said. “But most users will never see more than 1 percent of the total apps available.”

These findings are important for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad users, app developers, and even us here at iMedicalApps, and here’s why. For users, this means that finding the best apps requires some work – a conscious effort to search the app store for things that interest you. That includes looking beyond the most popular medical apps. For developers, this means that reaching potential customers requires finding ways to climb that popularity ladder. For the Malcolm Gladwell enthusiasts, this means finding the Mavens, Connectors, and Salesman (from Tipping Point) – basically the people with large social (or professional) networks who are most likely to adopt early and spread the message about your great app. And for us here at iMedicalApps, it means actively looking for that diamond in the rough, languishing at the bottom of the popularity rankings, and helping our readers discover useful apps they wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Ever tried using your iPhone medical apps with gloves?  Doesn’t work too well.  Although, if you’ve got gloves on you probably shouldn’t be using your iPhone anyways.  The iPad is being touted by many, including us, as a device that could be used with patients at the point of care.  Translation:  Could be used in hospital rooms and procedure rooms that require you to be gloved up.

Since the iPad has a capacitive touch screen your gloves won’t work, and that plastic stylus from your old Palm PDA won’t work either.  There’s a solution to this, the Pogo Sketch, featured in the picture.

The Pogo Sketch becomes an extension of your fingers and works on a capacitive touch screen.  No longer making the iPad or your iPhone inoperable when you have gloves on.  But what if you have to type information on the iPad or the iPhone?  Since your gloved fingers won’t work, using a stylus to peck each letter on the pop up keyboard would be a huge ordeal.

To counter this, iPhone OS version 3.2, the operating system that will be running on the iPad, is rumored to have support for a “handwriting keyboard”, via Engadget.

….and, most interestingly, prototype support for a “handwriting keyboard.” Maybe we’ll see some stylus action on this thing after all.

The above revelation would be significant for the medical community, especially for health care providers who need the ability to write text efficiently with gloved hands or while standing up.  I can imagine myself using this capability to type short notes or even prescriptions for patients while in a standing position in the hospital room.  The alternative would be to use the external keyboard connected to the iPad, definitely more cumbersome, and this would require you to sit down and have desk space.  And as most know, desk space isn’t exactly present in a hospital room.

I’m assuming Apple will not reserve this type of functionality for just the iPad, and will bring it to the iPhone and iPod Touch devices as well.  If they want to make waves in healthcare IT, they would be wise to.

Now that Apple’s bombshell has finally been dropped and the world has met the iPad, its finally time to begin separating fact from fiction. Will the iPad boast the same outstanding user interface as the iPhone and iPod Touch? Yes. Will the iPad solve world hunger? Probably not. Will the iPad be a useful tool in medicine, perhaps even transform the way healthcare is delivered or electronic medical records organized? The jury is still out on that one but, admittedly, I am skeptical. Here are a few of the reasons why.

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The iPad has created a great deal of buzz in the tech community. The medical and healthcare community at large are set to benefit from some of its key features, mentioned in our prior posting.  One of these key features, the beautiful 1024 by 768 pixel, 9.7 inch screen, is set to change the overall user experience for medical apps that have a focus on imaging, such as anatomy applications.  Although this medical app review was done using an iPod Touch, we can only imagine how much more aesthetically pleasing the iPad’s experience will be. As will be discussed later in the post, these applications are a perfect example of how the upcoming iPad could be used in the clinic setting to improve patient education.

A key thing to remember is your iPhone medical apps will run just fine on the iPad.  This post will review a trio of Modality’s latest anatomy flash card apps and provide extensive pictures of the following: Clemente’s Anatomy, Rohen’s Photographic Anatomy, and Moore’s Clinical Anatomy.

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The iPad, Apple’s new tablet, has just been released.  The following are some quick hitting features of the iPad that the medical community should be excited about, and ones we hope will be implemented in the clinic setting.

1. Battery life: Up to 10 hours, we mentioned in a previous post how important battery life is if Apple wants this tablet to be used in the healthcare setting
2. Beautiful screen: The 1024 by 768 screen appears to be gorgeous by many accounts.  This screen could definitely be used to look at imaging.  The Osirix app developers (DICOM station) are surely excited.  I’d love to see how radiology films will look on this.  This beautiful screen would be great for medical textbooks as well.
3. Pricing: at $499, definitely much less than other health care tablets.
4. External Keyboard: Along with battery life, this is one of the most critical components that will make this tablet actually useful in clinic.  I can’t imagine typing on the actual iPad in the clinic.  It wouldn’t be easy to do and in the clinic setting, typos can lead to critical medical mistakes.

We’ll have a more in depth post tonight with how the features the iPad touts can be used in the actual clinic setting.  We’re definitely excited and our medical peers should be as well.