In an exciting revelation from across the pond, the UK Department of Health is going to start encouraging primary care physicians to start prescribing healthcare apps to their patients.

The Department of Health’s leadership, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, is one of the biggest proponents of this measure:

At an event showcasing the best ideas for new and existing health smartphone apps, the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “So many people use apps every day to keep up with their friends, with the news, find out when the next bus will turn up or which train to catch.

“I want to make using apps to track blood pressure, to find the nearest source of support when you need it and to get practical help in staying healthy the norm.

At iMedicalApps, the idea of prescribing apps was mentioned more than a year ago in an interview we did with Practice Fusion, and we have written extensively about the subject recently, in a piece titled, “One day soon your doctor will prescribe you a medical app”.

Obviously, we feel the promise of mHealth is a great one, and our recent mHealth research series have shown data to back this up. However, our recent editorial article, “No, the FDA is not assaulting mobile technology”, shows the caution that should be exercised with these innovative medical and health apps.

The different dynamics of the healthcare systems in the UK enable their health system to implement these types of apps more readily than we can in the US. For example, a revered app in the UK is Patients Know Best. It enables patients to get their electronic health records form their clinicians and also easily distribute their information to other clinicians.

But in order to make this happen, the app taps in the NHS — the publicly funded health care system in the UK. Obviously, extrapolating this type of functionality in the US would be painful as our system of patient records is extremely fragmented.

On top of all this, would insurance companies in the US even reimburses for this level of care? Does it even matter if insurance companies would reimburse though?  Physicians who choose to “prescribe” apps could potentially differentiate themselves from their peers, making the reimbursement question a moot point.

Another factor to consider is liability. Would you as a physician even feel comfortable “prescribing” an app. Personally, I wouldn’t feel comfortable prescribing anything that I haven’t used myself. And I definitely would never prescribe an app that makes medical recommendations unless it’s backed by the FDA.

Overall, I think this is a great idea for the UK system.  But in the US, until we get the FDA or other regulatory bodies more involved, physicians will be — and quite frankly should be — hesitant to prescribe health care apps.

Source: BBC

By Perry Payne, MD & Felasfa Wodajo MD

iMedicalApps and the 2012 Medicine 2.0 congress are announcing the iMedicalApps & Medicine 2.0 mHealth Research Award, to be presented at the September 2012 Medicine 2.0 Congress.

Medicine 2.0 is the premier conference for health, medicine and biomedical researchers and clinicians on social media, mobile apps, and internet/web 2.0. The fourth annual conference held at Stanford University in September 2011 was a sold-out success and this year’s meeting, scheduled for Sep 15 & 16, at Harvard University in Boston will likely follow in its footsteps.

The abstract submission deadline of March 7 is rapidly approaching, so applicants are encouraged to apply soon !

iMedicalApps is proud to be sponsoring an award, to be announced at the conference, for the best paper on mobile health. Details of the award are below. The abstract submission page can be found on the conference website .

The range and breadth of clinical research is rapidly expanding, with many high quality studies now being published in peer reviewed journals. In the coming weeks, we will share some of the exciting work that presented at the 2011 Medicine 2.0 Congress. We look forward to seeing the great work coming to the 2012 meeting  !

The iMedical Apps & Medicine 2.0 mHealth Research Award

The award will consist of $500, a medical app bundle worth more than $200 and a feature article on iMedicalApps, after the conference.

To qualify for this award, the research should pertain to the use of mobile or wireless technologies in the diagnosis or treatment of disease, healthcare professional communication/care coordination or clinician-directed wellness behavior modification. Papers on telehealth or remote health monitoring will also be considered. Submitting researchers will also adapt their abstract for to be published on iMedicalApps in advance of the conference. A checkbox on the abstract submission page will allow for designation as mobile health research.

Full eligibility criteria are available on the Medicine 2.0 conference website.

ChartLogic, a provider of electronic health record (EHR) solutions to hospitals, recently announced at HIMSS 2012, their new Stella voice recognition overlay which is compatible with all leading EHR systems.

ChartLogic’s EHR suite includes electronic medical records, a patient portal, medical billing software, document management and interactive patient education.

This new overlay offering from ChartLogic works with iPads, iPhones as well as various other mobile devices and platforms.

The iMedicalApps team has previously reported on dictation software for small practices as well as practices with EHR systems, including the popular Dragon Medical software. Stella, though, adds new features which are compatible with numerous hospital EHRs and may be a viable alternative for many clinicians. Stella gives doctors the ability to use their existing devices at work to connect to hospital EHR systems without the need to replace or reconfigure the current system.

“Utilizing the same type of cloud-based natural language processing (NLP) employed in Apple’s Siri, Stella can greatly speed workflow for physicians by enabling them to use iPads, iPhones and other mobile devices with their hospital’s EHR system.”

Physicians are able to speak in a natural tone to Stella, which is able to take dictation, recognizing complicated medical terminology. Brad Melis, founder and executive vice president of ChartLogic concurs.

“Stella leverages the speed and ease-of-use of voice dictation, which is preferred by many physicians. Stella allows physicians to dictate, type, or touch (iPad) to review and create clinical documentation. While including a dictation option, it goes much further, using NLP to understand medical terminology and voice commands.”

Additionally, Melis notes that Stella will help medical groups meet the proposed interoperability standards for meaningful use.

“For example, Stella will facilitate documenting and transmitting clinical care documents because it is the first cloud-based EHR application that natively incorporates the new CDA (common document architecture) Level 2 standard. This helps meet the proposed meaningful use requirement that EHRs have the capability of producing human readable (and computable) documents.”

Indeed, CDA is a document markup standard that outlines the specific structure and semantics of a clinical document (such as a discharge summary or progress note) for the purpose of exchange. A CDA document is a defined and complete information object that can include text, images, sounds, and other multimedia content.

Source: Softpedia and Press Release

by Tim Bredrup

Anton/Bauer, a global provider of batteries, chargers, and other mobile power systems for the healthcare industry, is set to launch their new “hot swappable” batteries at the HIMSS12 Health IT Conference and Exhibition (booth #4869).

Anton/Bauer’s HotSwap systems enable hospitals to power mobile workstations without downtime while ensuring complete mobility. Because workstations never need to be plugged into a wall, HotSwap reduces hallway clutter and ensures compliance with Joint Commission standards.

 press release

by: Sumeet Banker, MD, MPH

In a medical emergency, time is of the essence. Timely medical and procedural interventions are often needed to keep patients alive and healthy. Pediatric emergencies in particular require accurate and timely drug dosing to prevent under- or over-dosing and subsequent bad outcomes.

Many pediatric emergency/critical care drug dosing apps have entered the market for the casual emergency room doctor or nurse caring for the occasional child as well as the experienced pediatric provider in an intensive care unit or operating room setting. However, not all apps are created equal.

Pedi STAT is a solid drug dosing app that presents material in a clear, easy-to-understand color coded format to eliminate medication uncertainties in potentially stressful critical pediatric environments. This app was created by an emergency physician, Dr. James Kempema, and developed in partnership with QxMD Software.

In this app, as in most other dose calculator apps, drug dosages are calculated based on weight or an estimation of weight based on age or length if the child’s weight is unknown. Upon entering the app, you are prompted to enter one of these measurements (weight or length may be in metric or imperial units).

The following screen is the main screen, which lists the categories of medications included in the app. Categories and drugs are fixed, so they cannot be modified and new ones cannot be added. Again, the app is geared toward emergency/critical care scenarios and contains everything from seizure medications to airway intervention drugs to antidotes.

The medications themselves are presented in a clear format with drug dosage, ranges when appropriate, and additional information regarding administration or pertinent adverse effects. Touching the age, weight, or length at the bottom of the screen allows you to change these parameters and thus change the calculated dosages easily.

The app also includes PALS algorithms for pulseless arrest, tachycardias, and bradycardias. It includes step-by-step instructions and dosed medications, as well as lists of potential causes for each rhythm.

Additionally, the “Airway Intervention” category provides start-to-finish references for rapid-sequence intubation, from airway equipment and pre-medications to induction, paralytics, maintenance medications, and ventilator settings.

Other features unique to this app include scoring guidelines and formulas for various medical calculations such as Glasgow Coma Scale, croup score, and burn size estimation using a chart that adjusts for the patient’s age. These calculators provide individual prompt screens for each component of the calculation to make quicker and more accurate assessments and management plans for patients.

Price:

• $2.99

Likes:

• Color-coded format and visually appealing headings/categories make information easy to read and understand
• Contains appropriate dosage for many commonly used emergency/critical care drugs as well as equipment sizes

Dislikes:

• Not able to customize or add/modify medications
• Weight cut-off is low at 43 kilograms
• Notable omissions include pressors and common emergency room drugs such as antibiotics

Conclusion:

• Pedi STAT is a solid drug dosing app for emergency room and critical care health professionals providing care to children
• Information is presented in a seamless format that facilitates quick access by category
• Though information cannot be customized, this app’s formulary is well-stocked for its stated purposes

iTunes Link

by Tim Bredrup

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) recently launched CardioSmartTXT™, a free texting program to prevent and manage cardiovascular disease. CardioSmartTXT will provide support, information, advice and tips on heart disease prevention as well as disease-specific states.

The ACC introduced two texting channels in the program’s launch – CardioSmartTXT PREVENT and CardioSmartTXT QUIT. CardioSmartTXT PREVENT is a six-month program aimed at the proactive prevention of cardiovascular disease and general heart health and wellness. CardioSmartTXT QUIT is an intensive smoking cessation support program to help users achieve smoking cessation goals.

Users can sign-up for CardioSmartTXT PREVENT or CardioSmartTXT QUIT at www.CardioSmart.org. Additional texting channels will be launched throughout 2012.

Press Release

3D4Medical are highly regarded in the medical app industry.

Their apps have gone from strength to strength winning awards and have been featured in many Apple commercials as a demonstration of the capability of the iPad as a platform.

iMedicalApps was able to exclusively catch up with John Moore, CEO of 3D4Medical and find out more about the NOVA series and their plans for the future.

¥ Please tell us a little bit about the background and initial founding of 3D4Medical

John Moore: 3D4Medical started out as a 3D Medical Image company. We spent years and a lot of money making 3D models and subsequently animations and images. These collections are still being used today and have made the front pages of some great publications such as Time and Newsweek and hundreds of advertising campaigns and textbooks. With the advent of the iPhone we saw the opportunity to use our 3D models in an educational capacity. At the beginning, we just really gave it a test to see how it would work out, and as the market grew, so did our commitment along with our knowledge of IOS programming. Today apps are the primary focus of the company.

¥ What is your vision for 3D4Medical as a company?

John Moore: We want to try and push the limits of learning using great technology; the iPad is a revolutionary device and we are excited about seeing what we can do to maximize its potential. The uptake of the iPad by medical professionals and students has been astounding, so our vision ties in with being at the forefront of new ways to think about learning and sharing information.

¥ We notice that 3D4Medical offers an educational discount for a number of your apps. Have any medical schools taken advantage of this and how have the apps been received?

John Moore: Yes, it has been very successful. We have major universities all over the world using our applications including Stanford University, of course, as an example. We get emails daily from students all over the world.

¥ Can you give approximate download numbers for your NOVA series of apps?

John Moore: 2.2 million including our iMuscle app. Until recently there have only been five Nova apps; The Skeleton System Pro, Muscle System Pro, Heart Pro, Brain Pro and iMuscle. These are all in the process of being upgraded to Nova III, which means they’ll have a massive amount of additional content such as animations, media for each pin, audio pronunciations, as well as hundreds of other features including public notes, which we hope will encourage a community of learning and information sharing between users.

by: Perry Payne, MD/JD/MPP

Recently, the Community Preventive Services Task Force made a positive recommendation for using mobile phone-based tobacco cessation interventions. This recommendation is significant because it was based on existing research, as opposed to some other approaches used to recommend apps (such as crowdsourcing).

The committee indicated that there was sufficient evidence for effectiveness of these interventions in increasing tobacco abstinence among people interested in quitting smoking. It made its determination based on findings from “six studies in which mobile phone-based interventions were implemented alone or in combination with Internet-based interventions.”

What is the Community Preventive Services Task Force?

The Community Preventive Services Task Force is an “independent, non-federal, uncompensated body of public health and prevention experts.” All of the members are appointed by the Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is not the same as the United States Preventive Services Task Force, which conducts reviews of existing literature to make recommendations for preventive health services in primary health care.

The goals of the Task Force include the following:

• Oversee the prioritization process for which systematic reviews to conduct
• Participate in development and refinement of review methods
• Consider the findings of all reviews and issue recommendations and findings to help inform decision making about policy, practice, research, and research funding in a wide range of U.S. settings

The Task Force produces summaries of evidence for different public health interventions. These are placed on a website called The Community Guide which is a resource for anyone interested in using an evidence-based approach to improve community health.

The services reviewed by the US Preventive Services Task Force are usually prescribed by a physician or other health care professional. The Affordable Care Act gives this Task Force a great deal of power by stating that none of the services receiving a high level recommendation are subject to cost sharing by insurers, essentially making these services free.

The recommendation of the Community Preventive Services Task Force was based on a systematic review approach. This procedure consisted of three major steps: identifying all relevant studies, assessing their quality, and summarizing the evidence. For mobile phone based smoking cessation interventions, the Task Force reviewed an existing systematic review conducted in December of 2008 along with subsequent studies up until August of 2011. The evidence for the recommendation came from six studies which evaluated the effectiveness of interventions that used automated text messaging for previously recruited participants who were willing to make an attempt to quit smoking.

All the studies were randomized controlled trials and assessed either self-reported or biochemically verified cessation outcomes at 6 or 12 months. Among these studies, three used mobile phone text interventions as the primary cessation support and three used mobile phone text interventions as a complement to an Internet based approach. At 6 months, both approaches demonstrated cessation rates better than control groups with more improvement in the studies with an Internet based approach and mobile phone texting as a complement.

Problems with the recommendation

One problem with the recommendation is that it is not specific to a particular age group. This intervention may work best for younger people because recruitment rates for older tobacco users were low in the studies. In addition, the studies were all conducted in other countries (Norway, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom), so their applicability to the US, especially populations experiencing smoking health disparities (mainly poorer Americans), is not clear and requires more research. None of the studies provide any information on the economic costs and benefits of mobile phone based interventions for tobacco cessation. Such information will be useful in the future as clinicians seek reimbursement from insurers for prescribing these kind of programs.

In addition, companies administering these cessation support programs will likely seek reimbursement for this procedure. Another problem the Task Force points out is that although mobile phone based interventions can be tailored to specific populations, they require on-going advertising and service promotion to ensure that people use them.

Thus, they require evidence based approaches to disseminate and/or implement them. For some populations, the evidence for health promotion may not be that strong which provides weaker infrastructure for implementing mobile interventions. There may be a role for the private sector here because of their ongoing efforts to advertise a variety of products to different populations (such as certain ethnic or gender populations). There are also concerns about the technological complications that arise for some users of these interventions as well as confidential and privacy concerns.

Future Research Needed

As with any recommendations of this nature, the recommendations are only as good as the existing evidence. Some of the key research questions raised by the Task Force are:

• What are the economic costs and benefits of mobile phone based texting interventions for smoking cessation? In particular, what are the costs and benefits of interventions that are sustained over one year
• Can these interventions work in US populations suffering from smoking disparities?
• Are there certain age groups that are more receptive to these interventions? If so, which ones and why?
• How do these interventions work in combination with other types of smoking cessation interventions?

From pheochromocytomas and thyroid storm to diabetic ketoacidosis and malignancy-associated hypercalcemia, we internal medicine residents face a variety of endocrine emergencies that can be complicated to manage.

From the authors of www.endotext.org and www.thyroidmanager.org, two free online physician-authored million-word endocrinology textbooks, comes the Endocrinology and Endocrine Emergencies (EEE) App.

It is available on both the iPhone as well as the Android format.

Edited by Dr. Leslie De Groot and authored by the same academic endocrinologists that contribute to the above two web-based resources, the EEE App seeks to provide assistance as a point-of-care resource for physicians recognizing and managing acute endocrine issues.

How can the EEE App help healthcare professionals and trainees in the wards and clinic?

As the home screen of the EEE App suggests, the user interface is clean and streamlined, offering links to the app’s sections, its authors, and information about the app.

The authors of the EEE App, listed alphabetically, are mostly academic endocrinologists, either professors or fellows, both international and domestic.

The app features short biographies of the authors with their academic affiliations and research interests, including which sections of the EEE App they helped author. After reviewing these bios, it becomes quite obvious that the information in the app is developed by endocrinologists who are both knowledgeable about, and interested in, the topics at hand.

On to the material of the EEE App, the topics are organized by sections, including the following sections:

• Thyroid
• Pituitary
• Diabetes
• Parathyroid/Bone
• Adrenal
• Pediatrics
• Lipids

Here, we take a look at thyroid storm, an endocrine emergency whose management can challenge residents. The section begins with the authors and then clinical recognition—the key first step to managing the condition.

Each topic in the app features the following information:

• Clinical recognition
• Pathophysiology
• Diagnosis
• Treatment
• Follow-up
• Guidelines
• References

The topics also contain tables to simplify information where appropriate.

Perhaps most impressively, each topic includes a Guidelines section, which features a link to the most up-to-date consensus guidelines on the management of the topic of interest. The links open the associated abstract (typically PubMed) within the app.

Moreover, each topic includes references for further learning, along with links.

Pricing:

• The EEE App costs $5.99 at the iTunes store.

Likes:

• Well-written information authored and edited by academic endocrinologists
• Seeks to be free from bias toward any commercial product; the app appears to be free of ads
• Guidelines and references, with links to resources

Concerns:

• $5.99 price tag, while accessing the web-based resources is free
• Easier browsing between topics and within each topic would represent a pleasant upgrade

Conclusion:

• The Endocrinology and Endocrine Emergencies (EEE) App from the authors of www.endotext.org and www.thyroidmanager.org offers well-organized, well-written assistance from academic endocrinologists for recognizing and managing a variety of endocrine emergencies. It represents a useful point-of-care resource for physicians (especially residents and including students) in internal medicine and emergency medicine.

iTunes Link

The West Wireless Health Institute (WWHI) has launched an ambitious new initiative, the West Wireless Health Council (WWHC), with the objective of creating an open framework to accelerate wireless technology in health care under the direction of an elite team of CIOs and health system executives from across the country.

Put simply, the WWHC hopes to transform wireless services into a utility just like water, electricity, water and air conditioning for hospitals and health systems by creating a medical grade reference architecture and making it freely available to all health care facilities across the country.

When I interviewed Council member Eric Yablonka, CIO of University of Chicago Health System, prior to the mHealth Summit last December he told me, “Wired to wireless we want to leverage a common infrastructure because its more cost effective, it will lower the cost of delivering care–not increase the cost, and then you want to get a leveraging piece over on the infrastructure and the deployment, which is what we did at our Children’s hospital six or seven years ago.”

Beyond creating and expanding the adoption of this reference architecture, the Council will focus on four additional aspects of wireless health including:

1. regulatory improvement and leadership
2. medical device interoperability and data analytics
3. medical device assurance
4. hospital infrastructure implementation.

These principles are certainly consistent with the Institute’s primary guiding vision of truly “infrastructure independent care”, a phrase used with great effect by WWHI CEO Don Casey,  during a separate interview with me in the run up to the mHealth Summit, when he outlined how the West Wireless team views their mission.

“From the perspective of health care delivery, we were able to design an innovative solution based on the needs of health care, rather than what’s currently available in the marketplace,” said Marty Miller, CIO of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and a member of the West Wireless Health Council Executive Committee.

“We want to see health care benefit from the same economies of scale that have really reduced costs in the consumer electronics space — hospitals are a key driver to make that a reality,” said Don Casey, CEO, West Wireless Health Institute. “Hospitals and health care systems have been dependent on expensive solutions that in many cases are proprietary and lead to unneeded costs and the Council’s reference architecture reduces that dependency.”

This initiative comes hot on the heals of numerous major announcements from the increasingly emboldened San Diego-based non-profit founder by billionaire entrepreneurs Gary and Mary West.

Members of the West Wireless Health Council’s Executive Committee include:

• Harold Dupper, Vice President/Finance, Platte Valley Medical Center, (Brighton, CO).
• Marty Miller, Chief Information Officer, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, CA.
• Bruce Rainey, Corporate Vice President, Facilities Design and Construction, Scripps Health, San Diego, CA.
• Chris Riha, Clinical Systems Engineering Technology Services Group, Carillion Health System, Roanoke, VA.
• Greg Walton, Chief Information Officer, El Camino Hospital, Mountain View, CA.

Also represented on the Council are the following:

• Margaret Campbell, R.N., Associate Chief Information Officer, HealthAlliance Hospital, a member of UMass Memorial Health Care, Leominster, MA.
• Dave Duncan, Corporate Vice President, Facilities and Support Services, HealthAlliance Hospital, a member of UMass Memorial Health Care, Leominster, MA.
• Steve Garske, Chief Information Officer, Kootenai Medical Center, Coeur d’ Alene, ID.
• John D. Hixson, M.D., Associate Deputy for Clinical Informatics, San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, CA.
• Greg Johnson, Chief Technology Officer, Director of IT Technology and Engineering Services, Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, Richmond, VA.
• Ed Lowell, Director of Infrastructure, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, Palo Alto, CA.
• Richard Mohnk, Associate Chief Information Officer, UMass Memorial Medical Center, Worcester, MA.
• Rick Pollack, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, Richmond, VA.
• Michael L. Sorensen, Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer, University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences, Chicago, IL.
• Bill Spooner, Senior Vice President/CIO, Sharp HealthCare, San Diego, CA.
• Patric R. Thomas, Corporate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Scripps Health Information Services, San Diego, CA.
• Mark S. Wiesenberg, Chief Technology Officer, Scripps Health, San Diego, CA.
• Marcia Wylie, Director Biomedical Engineering, Scripps Health, San Diego, CA.
• Eric Yablonka, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences, Chicago, IL.
• Michael Zachary, Director of Enterprise Architecture, Cook Children’s Health Care System, Fort Worth, TX.

As smartphones become more powerful and more consumers feel comfortable using them, there is an upward trend in technologies being developed to take advantage of this.

The latest iterations of smartphones, including the iPhone 4S, come equipped with 8 megapixel cameras–powerful enough to take detailed pictures of wounds to send to doctors — a feature we wrote about before.

Because of this, new business endeavors are springing up to tap into this growth industry. Dr. Douglas Smith is one such entrepreneur who is banking on the potential of telemedicine.

Dr. Smith operates a solo family practice in Plymouth, and was a co-founder of MinuteClinic. MinuteClinics can be found in various CVS pharmacies, and provide non-critical, medical care for patients without the need for an appointment.

In his latest entrepreneurial venture, Dr. Smith is an investor and chief medical officer of Consult A Doctor, a company that operates a nationwide network of 300 licensed, board-certified doctors who are available 24 hours a day to consult and write basic prescriptions for patients via phone, e-mail or videoconference.

Consult A Doctor is based in Miami, Florida and has conducted more then 200,000 HIPAA compliant consultations over the past 6 years. The vision of Consult A Doctor  is to significantly contribute to the transformation of healthcare delivery and access by making their convenient, cost-effective and safe care telehealth options the recognized solution for payers, providers, patients and the employers and groups they work with. It has a 93% customer satisfaction rating, according to the website.

“More than 1,500 employers have signed up, including PepsiCo and window-shade maker Hunter Douglas, typically paying $1 or $2 a month per employee as part of a wellness package aimed at keeping a lid on health care costs. Consult A Doctor also is gaining ground with insurers. Independent brokers are selling the service as a way to differentiate one health plan from another, and as an add-on to travel insurance. Last year, Consult A Doctor took calls from Americans in 58 different countries.”

Interestingly, the company is getting ready to launch a couple additions to the Consult A Doctor lineup. The first is a telehealth platform aimed exclusively at helping hospitals and clinic workers get care. This service is not for the general public.  Additionally, by July, Consult A Doctor expects to introduce My Practice 24/7, which will be marketed to private-practice physicians who want to set up a service exclusively for their own patients.

CEO Wolf Shlagman believes the company is set for huge growth and justifies this by explaining that there is a long waiting list of doctors who want to be part of the company.  Additionally, health insurance companies are poised to take advantage of this technology as well. He explains,

“Every large self-insured employer in the next 12 to 36 months is going to have some tele-medicine offering as part of their plan design to members and employers.”

Source: Star Tribune

By Tim Bredrup

Telcare, Inc. recently unveiled its new MyTelcare Diabetes Pal, now available for free on the Apple App Store. Telcare is offering people with diabetes and their caregivers an iPhone app that automatically synchronizes with a wireless glucose meter.

In January, Telcare BGM™ (glucose meter) introduced the industry’s first FDA-cleared, cellular-enabled blood glucose meter. The new MyTelcare Diabetes Pal App allows patients and caregivers to use their iPhone to visualize every glucose reading sent by the Telcare BGM™ while tracking medication, nutrition, activities, and notes. The app also enables patients who don’t have the Telcare BGM to manually enter their blood glucose data and track it over time. Patients and caregivers receive feedback from Telcare’s proprietary rules-based algorithms and the entire Telcare patient community.

press release | telcare.com

Coronary stents, available in both bare-metal and drug-eluting varieties, are widely used by cardiologists to treat the lesions of coronary artery disease.

Internal medicine, family medicine, and emergency medicine physicians as well as surgeons treat cardiac patients for whom they must make decisions regarding the management of these coronary stents after placement, especially when it comes to appropriate anti-coagulation to maintain stent patency(preventing in-stent re-thrombosis).

The Oxford American Pocket Notes (OAPN) Coronary Stenting App, developed by MedHand International, seeks to concisely address questions regarding coronary stent management for healthcare professionals. With a logo adorned by a bottle of medication, the heart and great vessels, a telemetry waveform, and a stethoscope, the OAPN Coronary Stenting App strives to make this cornerstone of cardiology comprehensible to non-cardiology healthcare professionals.

MedHand International has brought a plethora of medical titles from reputed publishers such as McGraw-Hill, Wiley-Blackwell, and Oxford University Press to the iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile platforms.

Read below to learn how the OAPN Coronary Stenting App can help you manage patients with coronary stents.

The home screen features the content of the app organized logically by section, although the inclusion of the app’s logo precludes visualization of all the app’s sections on one screen.

The OAPN Coronary Stenting App’s sections include the following:

• Preliminary Material
• Introduction
• Stent Classification
• Indications for Coronary Stenting
• Precatheterization Assessment
• Stent Delivery
• Complications of Coronary Stenting
• Medical Therapy
• Perioperative Management (a section of great interest to surgeons and proceduralists)
• Stent Surveillance
• Future Developments
• Patient and Provider Resources
• References
• Appendix

Here, we take a look at the section exploring stent classification, which features well-organized topics on stent characteristics, bare metal stents, and drug-eluting stents.

The information in the app is very concise, but features ample in-text references (but without embedded links to bring up the associated abstracts).

Moreover, the app features multiple tables and figures. Here is a table outlining the manufacturers and compositions of selected bare metal stents.

Here is an example of a figure from the app depicting a normal coronary angiogram, with the coronary vessels labeled. The figures and tables can zoomed and panned, and the screen turned horizontally, as well.

The References section features the information for the 80 peer-reviewed and high-quality published articles referenced throughout the app, but, as noted above, lacks links to the associated abstracts.

Another strength of the OAPN Coronary Stenting App is its robust search function, which features the ability to search dynamically either by title (section) or, with more utility, by text (which includes both references as well as sub-topics within the app).

Finally, the app allows for users to designate bookmarks for quick reference, and also keeps track of user history, with the most recently visited topics on top.

The in-app navigation, as seen above, can be somewhat difficult, as users must resort to the backward/forward arrows on the top of the screen, while the small icons in the top left are meant for users to move back to the parent section or home screen.

Pricing:

• The OAPN Coronary Stenting App costs $9.99 at the iTunes store.

Likes:

• Concise, well-written information appropriate for non-cardiologists regarding coronary stents
• 80 high-quality studies referenced throughout the app
• Robust and dynamic search function for either titles or text (includes references)

Concerns:

• The price may be steep for a topic as specific as coronary stenting
• Navigating from section-to-section can be a bit cumbersome
• Although the number and quality of in-text references are a major plus, the ability to link to reference abstracts would be appreciated in future editions

Conclusion:

• The OAPN Coronary Stenting App is best suited to assist generalists (internal medicine, family medicine, and emergency medicine physicians) and surgeons who manage cardiac patients with coronary stents
• Cardiologists and cardiology fellows should already be familiar with the content of this app.

iTunes Link

By Tim Bredup

National telehealth provider, Teladoc, will unveil its new telehealth solution for physicians called TeladocConnect at the 2012 Annual HIMSS Conference and Exhibition (HIMSS12) being held Feb. 20-24 at the Las Vegas Venetian Sands Expo Center, booth 13328.

TeladocConnect allows physicians to connect with patients 24/7 via telephone or secure online video. If a patient’s regular physician is unavailable, the consultation request is directed to Teladoc’s network of U.S.-based, board-certified physicians, which acts as an extension of the physician’s practice.

Physician practices, distribution partners and health plans can sign up for TeladocConnect. The service allows physician reimbursement for consults and generates an additional revenue stream for partners and physicians. TeladocConnect provides an affordable alternative to costly urgent care and emergency room visits, and offers physicians the flexibility to deliver consultations at any time from any location with minimal administrative overhead.

When patients request a consultation with their primary care physician, the physician is alerted and given the opportunity to respond. If the physician is unavailable, the consult request is routed to the Teladoc physician network, providing cross-coverage care for patients when needed.

press release | www.teladoc.com