Importance of iPhone in Healthcare recognized

Businessweek has published an article "Calling Dr. iPhon e" that relates how important the Apple iPhone has become for some physicians. While the article discusses the medical applications it also mentions how the iPhone can interface with medical records.

Handheld computers in medicine have mostly been used for references or calculators. The next step seems to be how to integrate electronic health records with a handheld device. The iPhone seems a good candidate for pioneering that area.

Medical Accessories for iPhone to come

The March 17 announcement from Apple of the 3.0 operating system for the iPhone had a component of interest to those in health care. The iPhone and iPod will now permit the addition of hardware accessories through the familiar iPod jack. The presentation showed the possibility of a blood glucose monitor that would directly read and record on the iPhone. Other possibilities are a sphygmomanometer or other physiologic monitoring equipment.

There are no devices yet, and the software will not be publicly available until the summer, but this is great opportunity for medical hardware developers or healthcare personnel seeking ways to make patient self-monitoring easier.

The presentation can be seen at the Apple 3.0 Preview .