MobiHealthNews held their first webinar, last Thursday, February 11,to discuss mobile health news and trends that will likely emerge during the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2011 annual gathering this year in Orlando. The webinar, which was attended by health professionals and practioners around the world was the first of its kind to predict future innovations and trends in mobile health.

Brian Dolan, MobiHealthNews editor, discussed the increasing expansion of peripheral health devices. Most of these were manufactured to assist medical practitioners in the developed world, but a few stood out as contenders for development context:

• The iHealth blood pressure dock, which allows you to monitor your blood pressure blood on your iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad .

• iPhone ECG case developed by AliveCor called the iPhonECG is a great new device. This gadget turns your Apple iPhone 4 into Electrocardiogram (ECG) by putting it into a special $100 case, however it has not been approved for sale in the U.S. yet. This would possess the capability to help healthcare works in the field monitor electrical activity of the heart and detect any heart disease, allowing them to assess the patient’s level of risk more accurately.
• Cellscope which turns a cell phone into a high-magnification microscope.is a revolutionary approach to curing infectious disease are a huge upcoming trend that will launch throughout the year and gain FDA approval.
  

  The CellScope

The HIMSS will hold its annual conference on February 20-24, where hundreds of corporate and non-for-profit members come together to collaborate on their mission to transform healthcare through effective use of IT and management systems.. Each year a few innovations stand out among the crowd. Two years ago, one of the big themes that emerged was that an electronic medical records (EMR) vendor developed a smartphone application. Last year, tablets such as the iPad, emerged as catalysts for mHealth devices to grow in usage.