Apps For Today’s Modern Nurse

I attended the UCSF School of Nursing Commencement last night and was reminded of how selfless and hardworking nurses are. Congratulations to all grads – and special thanks to the ones focused on health and wellness.

Healthcare is a demanding industry to be in, especially as a service provider. There are more and more apps that have become available in recent years to aid doctors and nurses, with a few comprehensive lists located here:

25 Best Nursing Apps (Rasmussen)

Top Nursing Apps (Soliant Health)

104 Apps Every Nurse Should Be Using (OnlineLPNtoRN.org)

Alexisavvy continues to be focused on consumer apps and products, but we acknowledge the wealth of provider apps out there. Better support for practitioners means better and more accurate quality of care for all.

Best in Healthcare For 2013

2013 was a great year for consumer healthcare technology. This year, 95 million Americans have used mobile phones as health tools or as search devices to find healthcare information, paving the way for a more connected and health conscious 2014.

To continue with my annual Year in Review, I present some of my favorite companies and posts in 2013.

A big thank you to my readers for your support, ideas and input.

-Alexis

Best New Entrants into Wearables:

• Misfit Wearables — Self-tracking wearable, incredibly elegant and striking
• Withings Pulse — Self-tracking wearable, Withings’ first entry into the physical activity tracker space
• Goji Play — Self-tracking indoor cardio wearable, transforms any cardio machine into an interactive gaming workout
• OnTheGo Platforms — Smart glass app development platform that focuses on exercise apps and more
• Updated versions of the Jawbone UP, Fitbit Force and Nike+ FuelBand SE

Best Smart Fabric Concepts:

• Athos — Athletic apparel made with smart fabric and sensors to measure every muscle exertion, heartbeat, and breath
• OMsignal  — Embedded sensors in the apparel monitor your heart rate, breathing, and activity

 Best Fitness Apps:

• RunKeeper — GPS app to track outdoor fitness activities
• Moves — GPS app to track daily activity continuously, shown on a timeline
• Charity Miles — GPS app that tracks and lets you earn money for charity when you walk, run, or bike

 Best Personalized Coaching:

• Sessions — Simple, individual, and thoughtful fitness program to help you get healthy
• Wello — Online workouts with a Certified Personal Trainer in real-time on your mobile device over live video

A New Twist to Common Items:

• HAPIfork — An electronic fork that monitors eating habits and alerts you when you eat too fast
• Beam Technologies — A smart toothbrush that monitors oral hygiene and reports habits to a smart app
• Withings Blood Pressure Monitor — Measures, calculates and tracks changes in blood pressure on graphs

Best Up and Coming:

• PUSH — Tracks and analyzes performance at the gym; measures power, force and balance
• Emotiv Insight — Multi-channel, wireless headset that monitors brain activity to optimize brain fitness and measures cognitive health and well-being
• Scanadu Scout — Medical tricorder to measure, analyze and track vitals
• MC10 — Stretchable electronics that conform to the shape of the body to measure and track vitals

Best for Healthcare Providers:

• Pristine — Develops Glass apps to help hospitals deliver safer, more coordinated, more cost effective care
• Informedika — Marketplace for electronic test ordering and results exchange between healthcare providers
• IntelligentM — Data-driven hand hygiene compliance solutions for hospitals to dramatically reduce healthcare-acquired infections

Digital Health Metrics in 2013: Mobile Usage, Doctors, and Pregnancy Apps

MobiHealthNews has compiled a list of 51 digital health metrics in 2013. For a full list, visit here.

Some interesting stats and metrics:

95M Americans used mobile for health in 2013

• “As of 2013, 95 million Americans are using mobile phones as health tools or to find health information, according to Manhattan Research. That’s 27 percent more than 2012, when the number was 75 million.”
• This number seems pretty reasonable. Research estimates that 56% of American adults have a smartphone, meaning that a little more than half of all smartphone users have searched the internet for a health related query. I’ve certainly searched for home remedies before.

Seven in ten doctors have a self-tracking patient

• “Seventy percent of doctors report that at least one patient is sharing some form of health measurement data with them, according to a survey of 2,950 practicing physicians.”
• This number seems a little high to me – but given health trackers, diabetes and weight measurement devices, and other applications (including blood pressure and cholesterol trackers), this number might not be too far off. It does suggest that patients are more aware of their health and are more open to sharing their data with others.

InMedica predicts six times as many US telehealth patients by 2017

• “According to new data released by research firm InMedica, the American telehealth market is predicted to grow by 600 percent between 2012 and 2017. While there are currently 227,000 US telehealth patients, according to InMedica, that figure is forecast to reach up to 1.3 million patients in 2017. US telehealth revenues, meanwhile, will jump from $174.5 million last year to $707.9 million in 2017.”
• While telehealth still faces some regulatory challenges, the growth trajectory shows that consumers are opening up to the idea of a slightly less personal, personal doctor’s visit.

Report finds pregnancy apps more popular than fitness apps

• “According to ByteMobile, on average, 39 percent of mobile users who are using one or more mobile health applications are using a fitness app. Of all the mobile health related data traffic that operators facilitate, about 50 percent of it comes from personal fitness apps.Ÿ While fitness apps are generating more data, it seems that pregnancy related apps are actually more popular: On average, 47 percent of total subscribers using one or more mobile health application use a pregnancy related application, according to the report. Despite the popularity of these kinds of apps they don’t generate nearly as much data as fitness ones do:Ÿ Pregnancy monitoring applications generate only 9 percent of the total mobile health related data traffic on wireless networks.”
• This stat is surprising. It says that if there are 100 mobile users who use one or more health apps, 39 of them use a fitness app and 47 of them use a pregnancy related application. Although research shows that women install 40% more apps, spend 87% more than men, men used health and fitness apps 10% more than women. Now to be fair, if you look at the breakdown of ages using mobile health apps, data shows that Millennials (aged 25-43) engaged with their smartphones every hour in the day and used fitness and health apps twice as much as the average of other age groups. This data claims that in a gender split, women use health and fitness apps 200 percent more than men do. If I were to venture a guess at the percent of total subscribers using one or more mobile health apps who use a pregnancy related app, I’d guess it’s 25% at the highest. Luckily we’ll have some interviews and posts in the next few months on pregnancy apps to find out more.

Thoughts on Healthcare and Life: A Little Self Reflection

Big thanks to Melissa Thompson for sharing my thoughts on healthcare wearables on her blog, Quantified30 and naming Alexisavvy a Best Healthcare Blog.

Here’s a snippet of my interview below. For more, visit Quantified30.

MT: What are the top three devices/apps you consistently wear and use these days? 

“Withings Scale – I really love this scale! I never used to track my weight but I do now – I get on the scale every other morning at the same time and in the same clothes. If I weigh in a little heavier in the morning, I try to eat healthier, drink more water or go for a run that day.

RunKeeper App – I like tracking my runs and I take photos after running to capture the scenery. There is something very rewarding about pulling up my running times and distances for the week. Also, I’m very focused on negative splits and RunKeeper does a great job tracking that and gives other interesting stats about my exercise.

Any wearable tracker I’m writing about – I go through phases where I will wear a tracker for a while before and after I write about it. I think I wore the Fitbit One for a month and the Mistfit Shine for a little longer. I’ve consistently worn the Jawbone UP because I love the way it looks, but as you’ve probably read in my latest post on the Jawbone UP, it still has some issues, as does most wearables. I’m looking forward to the Fitbit Force next!”   

MT: How has writing Alexisavvy for a year and half changed your habits or your life in general?

“When I was a healthcare private equity investor, I was often asked by friends for my opinion on which wearables I liked best, or what cool consumer health app I would invest in. And honestly, I couldn’t really give them an answer because in my day job I was looking to invest in pharmaceutical companies and lab businesses, not consumer health tech companies. So Alexisavvy.com was born – and yes, it’s definitely made me more aware of my exercise and diet. I’ve reviewed more than eighty wearable devices and apps and each time I try to test the product. My experience with Sessions has gotten me to run at least four times a week and I look forward to my walks to and from work.”

After answering Melissa’s questions, I was intrigued to see how exactly my weight fluctuated since I started Alexisavvy. I looked back on my Withings Scale data, various app analytics, and my health records – from early 2011 to October 2013, I lost 10% of my body weight and kept up with regular exercise (something I didn’t do in college or banking). I can’t properly conclude whether this is because I changed jobs, moved to a more running friendly environment, or started a healthcare blog. However, I do know that keeping track of my health and exercise has kept me better in tune with my body.

Medication Management: 10 iPhone Apps

Medication management is a very important and relatively easy thing to do – if you have the right tools. NannyJobs.net asked me to share their top 10 iPhone apps for medication management. I’ve featured Pillboxie as one of my favorites, but here are some other great ones. To get their full list, visit 10 iPhone Apps to Help Manage Medications.

DNA Data Storage: Replacing Your Hard Drive

DNA, nature’s data storage vehicle, has been successfully converted into storing personal files and photos – perhaps eventually replacing the hard drive. Of course any practical use is decades away – but scientists (Ewan Birney, Nick Goldman and collaborators) were able to store a complete set of Shakespeare’s sonnets, a PDF of the first paper to describe DNA’s structure, a mp3 clip from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a text file of an algorithm and a JPEG of the European Bioinformatics Institute, where the research was conducted. As stated in their paper published in Nature, “Digital production, transmission and storage have revolutionized how we access and use information but have also made archiving an increasingly complex task that requires active, continuing maintenance of digital media. This challenge has focused some interest on DNA as an attractive target for information storage because of its capacity for high-density information encoding, longevity under easily achieved conditions and proven track record as an information bearer.”

The process is expensive and time consuming, but the research team found it very accurate and hardy. DNA, when properly treated, can stay intact for thousands of years. The data to be stored is first decompressed and translated into the four bases of DNA – A, G, T, C, using software that Goldman designed, and then those bases are synthesized into strands of DNA. When you want to look at your saved data, simply sequence the DNA strands and then plug the string of AGTC’s back into Goldman’s software, which will convert the data into its original file form.

For DNA data storage to really take off, the price of synthesizing and sequencing DNA needs to be cheaper and easier. Perhaps one day, it will become more of a reality.

23andMe: New $50 Million Raise to Help Reach One Million Customers

Six months ago, I wrote about 23andMe and their price reduction to $299 per kit from the December 2007 $999 price tag. Today, the Company announced that it has raised $50 million in new funding and has lowered the cost of its genome service to $99. This round was led by new investor Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire known for his investments in Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, Spotify and ZocDoc. By lowering the price point, 23andMe is looking to attract more customers and grow their DNA data pool. The Company has a goal of engaging one million users (from 180,000 currently), and by analyzing the data of these genotyped individuals, hopes to discover new ways of disease treatment and prevention.

Article Share: “25 Apps Doctors are Prescribing for Patients”

Friends at Medical Billing and Coding have recently published an article on the top 25 apps that doctors are prescribing for patients.

Check out the full article here: 25 Apps

My favorites are RxmindMe (medication management), HealthySteps (health goal tracker), and my Allergy Cards (your allergies in multiple languages).