iPhone app for Epic

iPhone's in healthcare

Epic, the company which makes software for mid-size and large medical groups, hospitals and integrated healthcare organizations, and is also a vendor for electronic health records (EHR's), has released a new iPhone application which goes by the name of Haiku. Haiku is an iPhone application which provides authorized users with secure access to schedules, patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes.

Haiku was released on 8 January with very little attention, with not even the Epic website mentioning its release.

The app is a free download on iTunes, but the user must belong to an organization that licenses Haiku, Healthcare IT News reports.

Epic has won about 40 percent of the new contracts for EHRs at major hospitals, according to one estimate from research firm Klas Enterprises last October.

Stanford Hospital & Clinics

In October 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple and Epic had started a iPhone pilot project at Stanford Hospital & Clinics to test software that will let medical staff access patient charts on Apple's iPhone.

"Haiku provides authorized clinical users of Epic's Electronic Health Record with secure access to clinic schedules, hospital patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes. Haiku also supports dictation and In Basket access. Haiku works on both the iPhone andiPod touch," according to the app's description on the AppStore, mobihealthnews reports.

iTunes Apps

Haiku isn't the only health records app in the iTunes store, however. In fact, there are nearly 1800 free and paid apps in the store's medical section. Most are consumer-facing applications that cover a variety of interest ranging from emergency scanners to weight-loss programs. However, the top two free applications are Medscape and Epocrates, which have clinical uses.

Among EHR's on the iTunes store, most are personal health records that are unaffiliated with a enterprise vendor. Allscripts, the Chicago-based EHR vendor, showed an iPhone application at HIMSS09 that has been available to clinicians via iTunes for about 10 months. The free Allscripts Remote includes a patient summary, prescription list, notes, tasks and reminders for users of Allscripts EHR.

Apple appears to be making a concerted effort to target the medical community. It often features healthcare apps at press events.

Smartphones are being pushed in hospitals to replace pagers as doctors treat more patients and face more daily pressures.

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