Physicians and patients have something in common. Both have a voracious appetite for mHealth applications.

According to a new survey spearheaded by EHR vendor eClinicalWorks, 9 in 10 physicians support mobile health apps, particularly the variety tied to electronic health records (EHRs).

The same survey found that 93 percent of physician respondents believe that mobile health apps can improve a patient’s health outcome, and 89 percent are likely to recommend a mobile health app to a patient.

A corresponding infographic shows the emerging popularity of mHealth apps and their hastened adoption by doctors, patients, and a wide variety of healthcare industry professionals.

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It’s an incredible statistic that underscores the rampant adoption of mHealth tools by physicians eager to bolster quality healthcare through the advancements of contemporary technology.

A new survey of healthcare providers conducted by eClinicalWorks, a market leader in ambulatory clinical systems, shows that 93 percent of physicians find value in having a mobile health app connected to electronic health records (EHRs).

The same survey found that 93 percent of physician respondents believe that mobile health apps can improve a patient’s health outcome.

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AirStrip Technologies, a company known for its mobile patient monitoring solutions, announced recently a new addition to its platform that allows real-time access to Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems.

“For the first time, within a single mobile solution, physicians have real-time access to medical device data such as ECG waveforms as well as all other current and historical patient information imperative to clinical decision-making but formerly locked away in difficult to access, often disparate records repositories,” the company explained in a press release.

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It’s been announced that Allscripts and MyCareTeam (MCT) have launched a new integrated diabetes management solution that will integrate the latter’s application with Allscript’s Enterprise EHR platform.

Patients will leverage “MCT-Clinical for Diabetes,” which after being combined with Allscript’s Electronic Health Records system, will transmit blood glucose readings directly from patient’s glucose meters, along with blood pressure, weight, vital signs, caloric intake and exercise to a central web-based database.  With the Allscripts integration, this data automatically connects to the Allscripts Enterprise EHR, and can create user-defined alerts that are routed to a diabetes educator, a care manager, a nurse, the patient’s primary care physician or, if serious enough, an endocrinologist.  This process facilitates remote monitoring and coaching, increases user compliance with protocols, and most important, based on early results from UMASS and other studies, reduces hospitalizations.

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Yesterday during the HIMSS healthcare IT conference in Las Vegas, mobile network infrastructure provider Aruba Networks released results of a recent survey showing that 85% of hospitals are currently providing access to personal mobile devices.

In addition, the results show that 83% of healthcare IT professionals allow iPads on their enterprise networks and 65% support iPhones and iPod Touch devices.  Interestingly, 52% of hospitals currently support Blackberry devices as well, which is interesting considering RIMs quick decline in the enterprise space over the last year.  The healthcare industry seems to be one last shining spot for RIM’s fledgling enterprise business.  Lastly, Android is gaining major momentum as well, with 46 percent of the IT professionals surveyed allowing enterprise use of the Google OS on personal phones and tablets.

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ChartLogic, a company known for its EHR suite that spans Electronic Medical Records, patient portals, billing/document management and patient education solutions, has announced a new voice recognition overlay technology designed for compatibility with all leading EHR systems.

Called “Stella,” the new solution works similar to Apple’s Siri personal assistant by leveraging the same type of cloud-based natural language processing (NLP) technology to “greatly speed workflow for physicians by enabling them to use iPads, iPhones and other mobile devices with their hospital’s EHR system.”  Voice recognition has long had a place in the healthcare space, and with the proliferation of mobile devices the concept is finally coming to fruition.

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The folks behind the Health 2.0 Conference together with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Innovation (ONC) have launched three new “Investing in Innovation” (i2) Initiative competitions that challenge developer communities to develop innovative health information technology (HIT) solutions.

Like many of the previous competitions we’ve seen from various government agencies and private organizations, the new i2 programs promote the use of technology to “drive better outcomes, engage users in their health and improve healthcare quality.”  The three new challenges being introduced are the “Health Innovations in Commuting Challenge,” “Discharge Follow-Up Appointment Challenge” and the “EHR Accessibility Module Challenge.”

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