What Will Mobile Health’s Presence Look Like at #HIMSS14?

Maybe I have HIMSS 2014 on the mind and for good reason. I have dozens of appointments set and a full schedule of meetings with amazing people. For someone deep into healthcare IT, going to HIMSS with 1200+ vendors and 37k+ attendees is like a kid in a candy store. Everywhere I look there will be something interesting.

For the context of this site, I think it’s worth considering what the mobile health presence will be at HIMSS. My gut prediction is that there won’t be anything special that’s specific to mobile health. However, we will see mobile health as a part of every single company’s strategy. I guess some might consider this fact pretty special.

Think about what this means. Has mobile health finally just become a part of the broader healthcare IT?

I think this is indeed the case. Some people predicted this previously, but I think that this HIMSS we’ll essentially see that it’s become a reality. Mobile Health isn’t its own industry, but is just the natural outgrowth and evolution of healthcare IT in general.

What I do think will be interesting to watch is health IT companies that start with a mobile first strategy. In the EHR world DrChrono and the Kareo EHR (originally the Epocrates EHR) are a couple that have worked to be mobile first EHR. It will be interesting to see the suite of applications that entrepreneurs create with a mobile first design process in mind.

I’ll be interested to see what I discover with mobile and smartphones at HIMSS. I’ll be sure to report back on my findings.

February 18, 2014 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

EMR Android Apps

Well, as my first post on Smart Phone Health Care, I figured it would be appropriate to look at my current favorite type of cell phone: Android (or Droid if you prefer). Plus, since my blogging origins are in EMR, then it seems fitting to put EMR and Android apps together. Not to mention, the good people at EMR Daily News already did a post looking at the EMR Android apps that are available.

Between the two categories there are five products listed that offer some value and all of the products are currently free.
drchron EMR/EHR (for use with the full drchrono EHR platform) $Free
Allscripts Remote for Android (for use with Allscripts EHR systems) $Free
EMR-Bear Mobile (for use with EMR-Bear EMR) $Free
SmartEMR Mobile (promotional feature for SmartEMR account holders) $Free
OncoEMR (smartphone front-end for Altos OncoEMR EMR system) $Free

So, yes there are 5 Android apps on the Android marketplace that are EMR. Of course it makes sense that they’d all be free. No one would really even download these apps if they hadn’t already paid these vendors (or are paying if it’s a SaaS based EHR) a bunch of money.

The only problem for us is that I can’t really test any of these apps. I guess I better reach out to Dr Chron, Allscripts, EMR-Bear (really?), Smart EMR or OncoEMR to see about testing their application. Or even better would be to hear from doctors using these EMR software that could give us a review we could share with the world.

Either way, I’m really glad to see that Android EMR apps are being adopted. Even if it’s just checking your schedule, reading your lab results, and signing off charts. That’s a good step in the right direction and the perfect use of a phone with EMR.

February 8, 2011 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .