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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In a new study commissioned recently by Telenor Group and the Boston Consulting Group called “Socio-Economic Impact of mHealth,” it was revealed that there’s now more than 500 mobile healthcare projects taking place around the world.

The survey included studying the impact that mHealth initiatives can have across 12 different countries.  The countries were grouped into three clusters, each with a different set of primary healthcare challenges.  Where countries in one cluster primarily face challenges with non-communicable diseases and quickly growing system costs, countries in another cluster struggle with maternal/child health, communicable diseases and limited access to health care. What unites them all is that mobile health technology can “improve the quality, reach and effectiveness of services while reducing costs and the overall system burden,” the authors noted.

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GlobalMed, a company providing real-time healthcare delivery systems, has introduced a new enterprise-wide cloud-based solution that delivers visible and invisible light medical images to any Web-connected computer, tablet or smartphone.

Showcased during the HIMSS conference, the new solution — dubbed CONi — allows a physician to enter a SOAP Report that can be saved for later modification or “Finished” and placed into the patient’s medical record.  Once finished, the doctor’s notes cannot be altered or deleted.  In addition, patients and their guests can be given passcode access to their medical images with a limited amount of information.  The images are never resident on computers or mobile devices for security and patient confidentiality.

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Integrated Document Solutions (IDS) has announced that it will debut five new apps during next week’s HIMSS conference in Las Vegas.

According to a company press release, all five apps focus on “unifying worklists and improving accessibility.”  The apps allow providers to wirelessly authenticate verbal orders, dictate patient encounters, remotely sign reports, and document appropriate billing levels among other things.  The apps work across Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile devices.

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New estimates out from Juniper Research suggest the number of people using mobile networks for remote health monitoring services will top 3M by 2016.

Though nearly all health conditions can benefit from round-the-clock mobile monitoring, the report found that the field is being led by cardiac outpatient monitoring, as insurance reimbursement in the US market plays a key role.  However, the management of diabetes and COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder), in addition to other chronic diseases will play an important role in the remote patient monitoring market over the next several years.

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According to new data out from Juniper Research, it’s now estimated that more than 44 million mobile health apps will be downloaded in 2012, growing to more than 142 million by 2016.

According to the research, a majority of the growth will be triggered by the release of FDA regulations on which types of mobile health apps require agency approval; efforts to realize cost savings through remote patient monitoring; and the development of more consumer-focused applications.  ”Acceptance of new healthcare practices like remote patient monitoring will come directly from consumers becoming engaged in [mobile health care] through the smartphone,” said Anthony Cox, an author of the report.

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Two Korean Researchers- Hyun Gyu Park and Byoung Yeon Won from the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology in Daejeon, South Korea, are making a bold statement about the capabilities of the touchscreens in smartphones. While the idea of using smartphones as diagnostic tools through peripheral devices is not new, these researchers propose that the touchscreens themselves are capable of detecting extremely small differences in capacitance, which could be leveraged to diagnose diseases from the flu to salmonella.

They believe that a biosample – sputum, saliva, blood, or even urine – can be placed on the screen of a smartphone for analysis. This analysis will, however, highly depend on the ability to correlate differences in the sample with something clinically relevant.

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