Apple’s CEO is optimistic about his company’s plan to have the iPhone store all our health records, even though it got a black eye recently: turns out some third-party iOS apps leaked health-related data to Facebook.
But Tim Cook says that people trust Apple because the company has a deep commitment to user privacy, and people know that.
The goal of Apple’s Health Records initiative is to enable iOS users to see their medical history right on their device. Hospitals need to share their data for this to work, and Apple is getting a strong response.
When Apple introduced this addition to the Health app in January, there were just a dozen hospitals and clinics participating. That number has grown dramatically in the intervening months.
The success of devices like the iPhone and iPad in healthcare has become so pronounced that the Department of Health And Human Services has begun to single-out the use mobile devices as part of the meaningful use requirements for electronic health records (EHR) systems. In addition to identifying mobile device use, the agency has also taken steps towards explicitly regulating mobile device security needs in the healthcare industry.
The iPhone is the most popular device among medical professionals, followed by the iPad and then Android smartphones. That’s one of the key findings in a new study that examines the relationship between electronic health records (EHR) systems, mobile technology, and how doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers use both mobile devices and EHR systems.
One of the biggest points of the survey, however, is that the vast majority of U.S. healthcare providers do not use a mobile device to access electronic records. In fact only about in one in twenty (6%) use a mobile device to access electronic records or prescribe medications using an electronic prescribing system. That’s despite the fact that almost three-quarters (72%) of providers report using mobile technology as part of their practice.
