Triage and Treat Patients From Anywhere with Allscripts Remote iPhone App- An Electronic Health Record and ePrescribing Tool (upcoming Android support)
This article is part of iMedicalApps HIMSS 2010 Coverage. It includes a brief review of the Allscripts Remote app for the iPhone as well as details of a conversation with Allscripts executives who revealed that they are moving to development of an Android app.
When Allscripts announced the launch of Allscripts Remote last year, an iPhone application for their popular electronic medical record, it was widely touted as a transformational move. Forbes Magazine called this an app “that could change medicine.” Allscripts origins are interesting, shifting from prepackaged medicine to e-prescribing solutions before entering the electronic health record industry. In fact, according to the marketing folks at the Allscripts booth, they are the largest source of e-prescriptions in the United States. And while Epic, Cerner, and Eclypsis may be the players many of us commonly think about, Allscripts definitely definitely is not little – according to their most recent SEC filing, Allscripts had over $500million in revenue for 2009 with a net income of $26million. By comparison, Epic also had $500million in revenue for 2009. So the inclusion of a rich, clinically useful mobile platform with Allscripts Remote has certainly been a big move in the EHR world.
The iPhone App: Frankly, this is the mobile EHR app that clinicians have been waiting for. Imagine being at dinner with your family. The paging service for your practice sends you a text – Mr. Jones called in because he’s got some swelling in his legs.
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Five iPad Accessories for Health Care Professionals
It’s fair to say almost everyone has bought at least one accessory for their iPhone. My own collection consists of two items, a simple protective case, and protective case with a built in battery. I can’t emphasize how crucial my battery case has been, especially when I hit the 20th hour of a 30 hour on call shift and my iPhone’s native battery is about to die.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the development of iPad accessories, and how companies such as Griffin, Gelaskins, Sanho, and others are scrambling to manufacture products as fast as possible. Time is money in the accessory business, and the iPod/iPhone accessory business is big money — totaling 3.7 billion in 2009 alone.
Medical app developers have already mentioned how they will be customizing their products for the iPad. Epocrates and Macpractice are examples of two significant players who have already committed to the iPad platform — and there are more.
With that said, there’s no doubt some health care professionals will be using an iPad, whether for reading medical books or for EMR purposes. So then two key questions come to mind: What accessories do we want to see and whats already out there? The following are 5 key accessories:
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Top 10 Free iPhone Medical Apps for Health care Professionals
If you’re a physician, medical student, or in any other health care related field, trying to find the best free medical apps for the iPhone is a hassle. Apps such as “Dream Meanings”, “Relax Ocean waves”, and “Stool Scanner Lite” dominate the Top Free Medical Apps list in the App Store. Our top 10 iPhone medical apps list contains no such app, and this isn’t a re-hash of the top downloaded free medical apps either. Rather, this list contains the top 10 free iPhone medical apps health care professionals and students can actually use on a day to day basis.
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iPhone Security Risks and How to Protect Your Data
The iPhone and iPod Touch platforms have gained huge popularity with medical providers, with Epocrates saying over 100,000 physicians are actively using the medical reference app on their iPhone – and this was back in July of 2009.
Many healthcare providers feel comfortable with the iPhone because of its fluid operating system, and the extra functionality it offers, in the form of games and a variety of other apps. This added functionality is missing with more enterprise-based smart phones, such as the Blackberry platform. However, this added functionality comes with a price, and exposes the iPhone to security risks.
Nicolas Seriot, a researcher from the Swiss University of Applied Sciences, has found some alarming design flaws in the iPhone operating system that allow rouge apps to access sensitive information on your phone.
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Motion Computing – One of the iPad’s Competitors in the Medical Tablet World
When I first entered the clinical world, physician order entry and electronic medical records were just concepts to me. As I learned how to navigate the hospital, diagnose everything from the mundane to the incredibly rare (my first patient was a baby with an idiopathic subdural venous thrombosis), and figure out how to treat the sick, I also had to learn how to use those two systems as a prerequisite to doing everything else. The four hours of class didn’t seem to cut it, so I probably spent at least a month trying to get my bearings on how to manage these IT systems. So for anyone who is already familiar with some form of healthcare technology, in this case a tablet, I suspect the adoption cost is far higher than just the price tag. You may be surprised how highly some medical students and residents weigh the notion of learning a new system in their career decisions. And because of what seems to be a particularly high barrier to adopting new information technology in healthcare, anyone interested in whether the iPad will succeed in healthcare should first ask who the competition is.
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