Apple to make a push into healthcare

September 15, 2009 | Neil Versel

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It seems inevitable, given the success of the iPhone in healthcare, but I'm hearing that Apple is getting ready to make a full-scale push into healthcare. I understand that the company invited several vendors to a meeting at an Apple office in Chicago this week. I have no further details on what was said or who was present, but I know that there are a couple of EMR vendors out there who have tailored their products for Macintosh, even if it's just optimizing the view over the Internet for the Safari browser.

There is this little matter of the billions of dollars in federal money being funneled into health IT over the next eight years, and Steve Jobs would be an idiot if he didn't go after some of the cash. Steve Jobs is no idiot.

Neil Versel blogs regularly at http://clinicalit.blogspot.com/.

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MarkHollis says: Leading Apple EMR/EHR developer

September 21, 2009 | 9:18AM GMT

MacPractice, Inc. is the leading Apple developer of practice management and clinical solutions for doctors' offices, clinics, departments and faculty practices. Since its introduction less than 2 years ago, MacPractice EMR has been purchased by 450 practice representing some 1200 providers. FYI, in our 6th year, MacPractice supports a total of 2600 doctors' offices with more than 17000 users.

MacPractice released one of the first iPhone applications, MacPractice iPhone Interface, and we are releasing a 2.0 update this week to a handful of users for final testing that facilitates entering patient demographics and posting charges. This can be a very powerful tool particularly for a doctor performing rounds. We also plan for the imminent release of eprescribe capability on the iPhone that interacts with MacPractice's patient database.

MacPractice MD and MacPractice EMR are not a hospital enterprise solution, but as we continue to aggressively develop MacPractice EMR/EHR to the evolving standard for "meaningful use" expected to be finalized next spring or sometime thereafter, MacPractice will offer an affordable certified solution suitable for doctor's practices that leverages Apple's ease of use and innovative technology.

Our hope is that state and federal governments and hospitals that purchase enterprise solutions will require that they interface with solutions such as ours that are suitable and affordable for 160,000 small practices in the US.

Mark Hollis
President and co-founder, MacPractice, Inc.
MarkHollis@MacPractice.com