On Tuesday, the Royal Mental Health Center of Ottawa released a bi-lingual, multi-platform mobile application for veterans, their families and their health practitioners.

Put forward on behalf of the Canadian Operational Stress Injury (OSI) Clinic Network, the formal announcement out of Ottawa indicates that the OSI Connect mobile application will help veterans, military and RCMP recognize and help seek treatment for mental health issues.

The app is available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mobile devices. A mobile optimized website was also launched for veterans, Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP, their families and their family doctors to understand the top mental health issues facing veterans, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety and sleep issues.

The OSI Connect application has a series of assessment surveys that allows veterans to privately and discreetly determine the type of referral they may need to discuss with their health care practitioner, and where they might be able to find those clinics in their region.

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According to an interesting new analysis from Keith Speights of The Motley Fool, Apple has “accidentally” revolutionized health care through the release of its popular iDevice products.

“It used to be said that an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” Speights asserts. “That could still be applicable, but the opposite is true for doctors and Apple. Physicians love their iPhones and iPads.”

A study by Manhattan Research in 2011 found that 75% of physicians owned at least one Apple product. Vitera Healthcare’s 2012 survey of health-care professionals backed up this high number. The company’s study found that 60% of respondents used an iPhone and 45% owned an iPad.

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Two of the original founders of smartphone maker Research in Motion (RIM), which is now simply known as BlackBerry, are investing their fortunes into a new field.

Mike Lazaridis (pictured at Bloomberg’s offices on the right) and Doug Fregin have established a $97 million fund called  Quantum Valley Investments to support start-ups, particularly those inclined to play a role in the growth of the mobile health market.

Lazaridis, who stepped down as RIM’s co-chief executive officer 14 months ago, is putting his time and fortune into quantum computing and nanotechnology — sometimes referred to as the “science of the small” — which uses atomic-sized technology in fields ranging from medicine to cryptography.

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This week, on-demand digital fitness and training solutions provider PumpOne announced the availability of their popular FitnessClass mobile health app for Android.

Since launching on iOS two years ago, FitnessClass for iPad has consistently been one of the top downloaded fitness apps in the iOS ecosystem.

Within the first year of its availability, FitnessClass was recognized as the leading fitness app and was featured in the App Store Rewind 2011–a year in review of top iPad apps across twenty categories.

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M*Modal and Intermountain Healthcare have deemed themselves collaborators on the industry’s first speech-enabled computerized physician order entry (CPOE) app for Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

This week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, M*Modal – a provider of clinical documentation and Speech Understanding solutions – confirmed its new agreement with Intermountain Healthcare to jointly develop innovative mobile technologies.

Speech-enabled Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), the company says, will enable physicians and hospital staff to conversationally order patient medication and other medical functions using iOS devices.

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Kaiser Permanente has announced the launch of its latest mobile initiative — a full featured “Health Management” app for iOS.

Like its other mobile offerings, the new app allows members to access many of the same tools already available via its “My Health Manager” tool on kp.org.  Members can email their providers, check lab test results, order prescription refills, manage appointments and more — all from their iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.  This latest move comes on the heals of Kaiser making the largest electronic health record system in the world accessible via smartphones with the launch of its mobile-optimized website m.kp.org.

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It was announced during this week’s HIMSS conference that Verizon, Motorola and BoxTone are teaming up to develop secure solutions for Android-based devices and applications with the aim of making the platform suitable for health IT implementation.

The jointly created offering leverages BoxTone’s automated “Enterprise Mobility Management” (EMM) software platform on select Motorola devices,such as the DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX smartphones, as well as DROID XYBOARD 10.1 and 8.2 tablets, all of which leveraging Verizon’s 4G LTE network.  As such, healthcare organizations can now “reliably deploy Android-based mobile devices and apps that are designed to help them meet strict compliance requirements, including privacy measures outlined in the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).”

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