Demo of Epocrates running on the iPhone:

Walt Mossbery has said the iPhone will be going 3G in 60 days.

The iPhone should really have been 3G from day one. The entire strategy evolved around the use of the browser for 3rd parties (like ePocrates) to develop apps. But the GPRS and EDGE networks are too slow to run Web 2.0 style apps in the browser, hence the outcry and demand for the Apple SDK.

The release of the SDK and the lack of iPhone apps could have been avoided if the iPhone was 3G from day one. Perhaps time was a factor getting everything sorted for 3G from the get go. Perhaps they thought the phone networks didn’t have enought 3G coverage at the time of the official iPhone launch - do they now?

With a 3G iPhone - will you still want a non-browser version of ePocrates? Do cell phone bans mean that you sill want a non-browser version? Or is it really all about speed…

Epocrates have just sent me an email:

We’re excited to let you know that Epocrates, Inc. was one of only five
companies, including Salesforce.com, AOL, EA and Sega, to be highlighted by
Steve Jobs during the iPhone Software Roadmap media briefing. Epocrates has
already begun working directly with Apple to create a downloadable version of
its clinical products that can be downloaded directly to the iPhone or iPod
Touch.

In the meantime, you can view epocrates on the iPhone Safari browser by pointing it at m.epocrates.com.

View the entire Apple SDK Event: http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/mar/rtp20e92/m_08770365506i_350_ref.mov

Google have put up a log-in page for Google Health.

And we’re not just talking about urologists…

Don’t worry about that guy about to operate on your gallbladder. He trained on the Wii.

According to a very small, very preliminary study, playing certain video games on the Nintendo Wii helps surgical residents to hone their fine motor skills and improve their performance on a serious surgery simulator.

OK, so a simple video game helps these docs with a slightly more complicated one. But bear with us here because the more sophisticated simulator is the sort of thing that’s used right now to help doctors do a better job on keyhole surgery using tiny instruments outfitted with video cameras.

Improvements in simulator performance didn’t come from just any Wii (see image), or any game. Marble Mania is good, for example. Tennis (astonishingly fun to play on the Wii, which uses a motion-sensitive wireless control) isn’t so helpful. “The key is to have subtle hand movements,” Kanav Kahol one of the authors of the study, told the Health Blog. “You can’t hit a tennis swing and expect to become a better surgeon. You need fine motor control.”

Kahol, a biomedical informatics expert affiliated with Arizona State and a hospital chain called Banner Health, worked with Marshall Smith, a Banner surgeon, to see if playing the Wii (Wii-ing?) improved residents’ scores on a standard simulator for minimally invasive, or laparoscopic, surgery.

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog.

Jeff Hawkins is a bit of a legend in mobile computing circles. He’s the founder of Palm, Handspring and invented the first really successful PDA, the Palm Pilot.

Jeff also has a major interest in Brain Science and has formed a new company Numenta, to develop artificial intelligence technology.

More videos after the break:

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve set up a new Health Informatics Discussion Forum. Sections include Evidence Based Medicine, Electronic Health Records, Decision Support Sytems, Standards, Careers, Education and more.

Although robotic exoskeletons are being developed primarily for military purposes, they could also be used in medical environments. Exoskeletons could enable nurses to move incapacitated patients without resorting to hoists. They could also be used to help re-habilitate patients who have suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury.

The reviews of the new Amazon Kindle are coming in.

Video Reviews:

If you don’t know about the kindle yet, watch this film:

More Reviews:

Crunch Gear: http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/11/19/mini-review-of-the-amazon-kindle/
Boing Boing: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/amazon-kindle-ebook-1.html

I’ll update this post as more reviews come in.

From a medical perspective, this device has many of the advantages of the old Palm Pilots: long battery life, very each to use and most importantly (in my opinion) it doesn’t require a desktop computer. This means you could load it up with medical texts from amazon and not even need to ever sync with your PC.

More info on this device at Amazon.com

Philips have just announced their Mobile Clinical Assistant: Cliniscape.

Product details here.

Here’s the full press release:

At the World of Health IT annual congress, Royal Philips Electronics today unveiled CliniScape, its first mobile clinical assistant (MCA). The medical-grade, easy-to-clean handheld device brings a wide range of features together into a groundbreaking mobile point of care solution defined by Philips, Intel and other industry partners. These include a 10.4” pen-touchscreen, RFID and barcode scanning, and a digital camera. CliniScape completes the missing link in hospital technology, allowing nurses and doctors to document a patient’s condition instantly, reducing their workload and increasing the quality of bedside care.

“Healthcare providers work in fast-paced, high-stress conditions. They often need to make critical decisions on the move with nothing more than a clipboard and their own two feet to help them find relevant clinical data,” said Franco Martegani, CEO, Philips FIMI, a division of Philips Medical Systems. “With the mobile clinical assistant, doctors and nurses can take more informed decisions, more quickly and with less risk of avoidable errors, whilst avoiding the drawbacks of conventional handheld devices, such as short battery life, complex user interfaces, the risk of spreading infection or the need to carry a cumbersome barcode reader or digital camera.”

Designed as a semi-sealed device without any I/O ports except for one USB slot behind a protective cover, the MCA can easily be wiped clean with disinfectant to reduce the spread of infection. The MCA category was defined by Intel’s Digital Health Group with input from nurses and physicians worldwide and has the support of a number of leading healthcare EMR vendors who have optimized their point of care software to take full advantage of the integrated features delivered by the MCA.

The device’s durable design makes it suitable to withstand knocks, drops and the general daily activities within the hospital. At less than 1.6kg, the lightweight device is designed to minimize fatigue when being held flat thanks to a hand grip on the back of the unit. The grab and go docking unit comes with a built-in battery charger, 3 USB ports and one Ethernet jack to allow the MCA to be used as a desktop device when docked.

Available in early Spring 2008, the CliniScape MCA is based on a 1.2 GHz Intel® Core™ Solo Processor with a 60 GB hard-disk drive, 1 GB SDRAM, WLAN 802.11 b/g/n, Windows XP Tablet PC edition (Vista planned) and an easy to read 10.4inch XGA touch-screen with digitizer. The device integrates a number of technology features together on a single platform, including:

RFID reader for single swap user-authentication and real-time verification of patients, medication, blood containers and other clinical specimens
Optional built-in barcode reader to support bar-code based identification protocols
Bluetooth for cordless connection of devices such as a heartbeat or blood-pressure sensor, telephone headset or dictation microphone
2 Mpixel camera for real-time capture of digital pictures of patient wounds
Medical-grade compliance to allow its use in clinical areas where traditional laptops or tablet PCs are not allowed
The CliniScape MCA also acts as an ideal mobile point of care solution for accessing Philips’ wide range of clinical applications, such as the IntelliVue Clinical Information Portfolio (ICIP) and iSite PACS, the leading enterprise-wide medical image and information management system.

At the World of Health IT annual congress, Philips will also be demonstrating how its recent acquisition of XIMIS Inc. will strengthen its RIS offering. In addition, the company will be exhibiting its industrial-grade speech recognition system, SpeechMagic, a technology that is integrated into the XIMIS RIS and can be used with the MCA.

Philips will also be unveiling a new concept study looking at how speech can be automatically translated into structured data. The study, in partnership with Map of Medicine and Health Language Ltd, will look at how such technology can capture a wealth of decision-support information that can then be made available to the care provider at the point of care. Klaus Stanglmayr, Strategic Product Marketing Manager, Philips Speech Recognition Systems, will hold a tutorial on the study at World of Healthcare IT on Wednesday 24th October, in Theater 425 at 12.45 – 13.30.