Posted by Darrin Manke on Tue, Dec 22, 2009
From Consumer to Medical Product
For years now the iPhone and iPod Touch have been blurring the lines between what is a defined as a consumer or medical product. I recently ran across a few articles that described how medical students and physicians use their iPhones and iPod Touches for all types of assistance throughout the day. One article in particular, The iPod Touch Medical PDA: Med Students Best Friend, from lesterlung.wordpress.com listed a med student's top ten uses for his iPod Touch. A few are listed below:
- Translator: "I can keep an entire Obstetrics/pregnancy workup in Spanish on hand while on my Ob-Gyn rotation during which I have encountered many patients who only speak Spanish."
- Calculator: "Calculating nutritional balance (whether with infant formula or total parenteral nutrition) in the NICU, assessing urine output and fluid intake, and determining the amount of fluid with which to replenish and maintain a pediatric patient".
- Mediquations: "There are numerous medical equations and algorithms that dictate patient care, and instead of Googling the equations on a hospital computer or memorizing all of the equations, it is much easier and faster to use one of these apps to accomplish the task. Some of my frequently used equations: Temperature Conversion and Urine Output. Next month on my Internal Medicine rotation: FENa, Corrected Sodium, GFR, etc".
- Epocrates Rx: "I use it to figure out the indications for a medication, to determine its real spelling (since patients often mispronounce the name) and alternate name, to determine the dosages for writing orders or prescriptions, to determine the cost, to determine contraindications and adverse reactions, etc. Also, Epocrates Rx has an excellent Interactions Checker that allows one to input multiple medications".
Another article written by Ashlee Vance of the New York Times describes a patient with ALS who uses her iPhone to translate text into speech instead of using the multi-thousand dollar insurance-approved device. Is this just the beginning? How quickly will this trend grow and when will the FDA step in to insist that regulatory compliance is required if the iPod Touch is going to be used for specific patient care and other clinical use? I can easily see vital sign monitors wirelessly networking to these types of devices for constant patient monitoring by hospital staff and a host of other uses within the hospital. With over a thousand current applications and new ones being created daily, it will certainly be interesting to see how these multipurpose electronic devices expand into the medical space and if Apple will evolve into a medical device company.
We are very interested in your input. Please send us your thoughts if you are aware of other medical uses and applications or if you just want to comment....