[PC World Article] Prognosis for Medical Apps Is Guarded

[JaniceFlahiff]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/261765/prognosis_for_medical_apps_is_guarded.html

Excerpt

The explosive rise of medical applications that run on smartphones and tablets has been noted by the medical profession for some time. Indeed, health care professionals are behind much of the innovation occurring with medical apps, as they seize the opportunity to build tools they can use on their iOS and Android devices.

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But just as all new waves of technology bring with them room for growth and innovation, there are also risks that must be mitigated as well. And with medical apps, the risk isn't just a crashed app or lost data -- it can also be a human life.

Who's in the waiting room?

Wading into the medical application sector is a complicated business. Just ask Morgan Reed, a programmer on the advisory council of mHIMSS. mHIMSS is the mobile group of the largerHealthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) non-profit, an organization that works on improving IT systems for the healthcare industry.

Reed can paint a broad picture of the state of healthcare IT these days. Right now, healthcare IT is undergoing a major retooling of its own: there's a government-mandated shift to convert all healthcare records into electronic format, not to mention the need to comply with new regulations coming into effect as part of the Affordable Care Act.

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          Additionally, Levine sees a danger in just building any apps without complete research. For some apps, the content handled by the application will require the app to be compliant with the law. An app that tracks blood pressure or blood sugars is handling patient-specific data, and therefore must be HIPAA compliant. This is not something an app developer will want to get wrong.

        

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It's not that apps should be built without thought about patient care or the app's practicality; Thott just believes that, as practitioners, health care providers should be able to figure out how apps will work best for them.

"Eventually the market will dictate what's successful and what's not," Thott emphasized.

Filling the prescription

Ultimately, it may come down to a balance between these disparate views.

One solution that Reed points out is something like the Aetna-sponsored Happtique, which is essentially an app store environment that curates the best apps for doctors and patients.

In this kind of scenario, applications are screened and filtered by peers and an insurance provider to ensure quality, without government regulations. Reed sees solutions like Happtique as portals where doctors could trust an app well enough to actually prescribe it for patient use.

"This would be a really revolutionary way of dealing with apps," Reed said. Delivery of apps in this nature would ensure better app quality and keep the doctor aware of what apps the patient was using to improve their health.

Whether public or privately regulated, it's clear that some sort of management of medical apps is coming soon. But is it too late to regulate such an exploding industry?

That's a diagnosis that may have to wait.