One impressive measure of the impact that smartphone applications are having on the health, medical and fitness sector is the sheer number of apps that are currently available.

 

In a recent column, New York Times technology writer David Pogue estimates that there are now around 7,000 medical apps for the iPhone (News - Alert). Pogue picked his favorites for a speech at the 2009 TEDMED conference, including JetLag RX, an app to help frequent travelers beat jet lag by following a prescribed routine for their flight and destination, Uhear, a free app that tests your hearing, Lose It!, for tracking all the food you eat (pictured below), and Eye Glasses, an app that scans and magnifies small print and displays it in larger type on the iPhone screen.

 

These and many more of the 7,000 health related apps available to iPhone users may be of limited medical value, but they are clearly offering more choices to consumers who want to take an active role in managing their own health.

 

Aside from sheer numbers and consumer popularity, an important indicator of the impact of mobile medical applications is the adoption by physicians and health care providers of clinical apps for smartphones.

 

A new study by the Mobile Health Initiative “Exploring the mHealth Application Clusters,” analyzes several thousand smart phone applications that are designed primarily for clinical use, as well as for patient health monitoring. According to this study the iPhone is not the only mobile device popular with healthcare providers. mHealth analyzes over 3000 healthcare applications that available for other types of smartphones including Blackberry, Symbian (News - Alert) and Windows Mobile devices.

Breaking down these apps by primary user and medical focus, the mHealth Application report notes that a high percentage of the most widely adopted mobile applications are actually aimed at clinicians rather that at consumers. The most common physician and health care provider apps include:

 

·         Drug databases

·         Medical calculators

·         Reference programs

·         Decision support for both physicians and nurses

·         Tracking patient stats (weight, blood pressure, etc.)

·         Patient history accessing, managing, and documenting

·         Communication managers

·         Payer tools (coding, eligibility determination, etc.)

 

These apps include well-known health content providers such WebMD Health (pictured right), which has launched a free Medscape CME iPhone app for physicians called Medscape Mobile. Epocrates, one of the most prolific mobile content developers recently announced that more than 100,000 physicians use its iPhone app. Skyscape Medical Resources offers an iPhone app with content such as Outlines in Clinical Medicine, a medical calculator, and a drug dosing tool.

In addition, the mHealth study analyzes the types of applications that are being used by health-minded consumers and patients. As characterized by mHealth, these apps are clustered in the following areas:

 

 

Add in the thousands of iPhone apps that are focused on helping consumers with diet, nutrition, exercise and general wellness practices such as yoga and meditation, and the mobile medical and health area is one of the fastest growing smart mobile sectors. Rapid growth, however, doesn’t always translate into high revenues or competitive advantage. As thousands of new iPhone apps debut every month, strategic ecosystem partners are essential for adoption and survival.