Not even major medical imaging modalities are safe from the app invasion. This summer, Royal Philips entered the frontier of
app-based ultrasound with Lumify, an FDA-approved and DICOM-compliant ultrasound system that plugs into a smartphone or tablet's port.
One new medical app that could quickly increase app use among health care professionals is Apple’s recently released AirStrip, an app that can be used on the Apple Watch, that allows clinicians to read a patient’s heart rate and other acute health statistics. The founders of AirStrip believe it could ultimately help doctors better monitor patients with chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes from home, and allow the patients to avoid hospital visits.
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Apple clearly has its sights on becoming the leader in technology that could mobilize health care. Of the 1.4 million apps used through Apple’s operating systems, more than 18,000 are for medical applications, and that doesn’t count another 10,000 apps listed as “health and fitness apps.” By comparison, the Google Play Store, which is the Android platform marketplace, boasts about 1.5 million apps, of which about 2 percent are focused on medical, health, and fitness categories.
According to the Kalorama report, six of the top 15 paid medical apps available through Apple’s App Store deal with monitoring infant health, including the top two, “My Baby’s Beat” (sound amplification) and “Baby Connect” (activity tracking), both priced at $4.99. The topic range among the top 15 medical apps at the Google Play Store is more varied, covering everything from tracking baby growth and development (“Feed Baby Pro”) to blood pressure tracking (“iBP Blood Pressure) to veterinary reference (“Pet First Aid”).
Could anything over the next few years alter the projections on mhealth app use and revenue? Carlson says a couple of developments might change the dynamic and send the analysts back to their computer projections. “The packaging of apps with medical devices on a large scale could have a big impact on the numbers,” Carlson told HCB News. “Also, if the focus on prevention in health care just explodes based on the Affordable Care Act or other factors, the revenue projections could increase greatly.”
Because, no doubt, there will be plenty of apps for that.
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