Health Canada approves iPhone medical app for diagnostic imaging use – FDA to follow suit? [Resolution MD Mobile]

by Iltifat Husain
on 04/22/10


Canadian doctors can now use the iPhone medical app, ResolutionMD Mobile, for diagnostic purposes.  This is a huge step in legitimizing the use of mobile technology to make diagnostic recommendations.  Canadian healthcare providers can use the app for 2D, 3D and MIP/MRP viewing of CT and MR imaging.  Ross Mitchell, a professor in the radiology department at the University of Calgarys faculty of medicine, has been working on this app for years and has spent significant time fine tuning the product by gaining input from fellow physicians. But Mitchell doesn’t want to stop with just the iPhone.

He is hoping to bring the application to the iPad, and is currently testing the platform. With the larger screen of the iPad, this makes natural sense. The efficacy of this application has been tested by Mitchell:

We did a stroke trial … and compared performance of radiologists reading on the iPhone to the standard clinical reading work station and the performance was identical, said Mitchell. They performed just as well in this tough diagnostic task.

This isn’t the first time a study has been done to see how effective mobile diagnostic imagining is on the iPhone. Last year, we reported how OsiriX was used in a study to accurately diagnose acute appendicitis.

The ResolutionMD Mobile app is also being tested in the US in a few different hospital systems, the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, among others.

The FDA recently made a big splash by giving Proteus Biomedical’s wireless, adhesive sensor technology Raisin, FDA approval, and Mitchell is hoping his mobile diagnostic software will meet a similar fate.  FDA approval is currently pending, but with Health Canada granting clearance to Canadian physicians, we hope the FDA isn’t far behind.

Source: Calgary Herald

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Comments:

  • msaiwn
    Wow, this is amazing work. But, I fear that technology will go so far that will overcome the human resources in the care system. There are things that can't just be replaced by this kind of technology, like the contact and the relationship with the patient. Drug treatment is just one example where the human contact is very important. I understand that this will reduce the costs and the effort but why go so far?
  • JP
    Yea, the FDA is seriously lagging when it comes to regulating this mobile medical technology. It seems to completely have taken them off guard. With so many iPhones and iPod touches sold (tens of millions), you would think they would get the hint and do a better job in this market.
  • Iltifat Husain
    As far as we know, Osirix is yet to be FDA approved.
  • internMD
    What about osirix? has it gotten approved by the FDA?
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