HIPPA and Medical Apps - What is the Status?

The world of medicine is changing fast. Textbooks are no longer in vogue for medical information. Today, one can find almost  any type of medical information on the web.

Hospitals and healthcare providers have now gone one step further to compete for patients. Many of them now have apps available on mobile devices like androids and iPhones. There are medical apps which provide consumers with the latest developments in medicine, when the ER is not busy, what services are provided by a healthcare facility and so on.

How Health Risks Assessment Can Be Fast With Your Smart Phone

There was a time when one always had to see a doctor to get a diagnosis and treatment. However, in just the past five years, healthcare delivery has changed. With the availability of digital devices like tablets and smartphones, medicine has gone hi-tech. Today, many hospitals have apps that provide direct information to the patient. The smartphones are now being loaded with ample medical information that is readily available with a click of a button. The days of physically going to a doctor for every complaint are over.

With the revolution in smartphone technology, there are tools that can track heart rate and rhythm, monitor symptoms of a mental health disorder and even tell you if the blood sugar levels are low or high. Smartphones have many benefits for the population – they can

- cut costs of a doctor's visit,

- speed up pace of care

- provide more autonomy and power to the patient.

Do modern physicians need an app that can spot a disease?

Are phones now ‘pocket doctors’?

The use of mobile phones and innovative apps is emerging in the management of many health conditions. Apps are widely accepted and rapidly advancing for preventing, monitoring and diagnosing disease. Currently apps are used in the management of cancer, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, eye disease, skin cancer and Parkinson’s disease, to name a few.

If apps are now capable of this individualized technology, and there is such wide-scale usage, are smart phones now a pocket replacement for doctors? There has been much debate around this in the medical arena.