Institute For The Future

Medical data on the go

In an immediate effort to follow up on my recent pledge and to share new developments in mobile health, here's a quick item about an interesting smartphone app. mVisum's tag line is "Medical data delivered to the palm of your hand . . . Anytime -- Anywhere." (For those of you familiar with our Global Health Economy map, you'll remember that "anytime, anyplace health" was a key driver we identified on the map; it is a theme that we returned to at our conference on Mobile Health.)

The technology "allows medical professionals to securely receive, review and respond to patient data recorded at the point of care." Data can include EKGs, x-rays, CT scans, and MRIs, as well as vital signs and other textual information. mVisum uses secure, HIPAA-compliant Internet servers to transmit the data.

Privacy and related HIPAA concerns have been important issues raised in discussions of the future of health informatics. mVisum seems to provide a useful, workable solution worth noting.