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Health Info At Your Fingertips

Ruby de Luna
09/12/2011

There are thousands of mobile apps to help you do everything from checking bank balance and finding recipes to checking sports scores. Now, members of Group Health have one new tool to communicate with their doctor. The Seattle–based health care provider recently launched a mobile app. As KUOW's Ruby de Luna reports, medicine is joining the expanding world of mobile apps.

TRANSCRIPT

Group Health's mobile app for iPhones became available to members in August. It allows patients to do a number of things, like access their medical records, email their doctors and schedule appointments. The most popular feature, by far, is to check wait times at the lab or pharmacy.

Dr. Gwen O'Keefe is a general internist at Group Health. She's also chief informatics officer. Her job is to bridge the world between medicine and computer technology.

A year ago, when Group Health was developing its mobile app, they were trying to visualize how a patient would use the app. One scenario, says O'Keefe, goes like this.

O'Keefe: "I'm a mom. I have an 11 year old. I would get the calls from school saying your daughter has a rash. You need to come get her, and you need to do something about it. You want to know where can I get an appointment right away, or where you can I walk in, but you don't want to go to the emergency room. You ideally want to see your primary care doctor. If they're not there, somebody else who can help you."

O'Keefe says with their mobile app a parent can look up the symptoms, call a nurse for a consultation or make a doctor's appointment. The idea is to give that parent the tools they need to deal with this situation on the fly.

Other medical centers in the Seattle area, like Overlake and Swedish Hospital, also offer mobile apps. Those apps allow patients to check symptoms and find a doctor nearest them.

O'Keefe says Group Health's app gives patients access to their medical records and contact their doctors directly.

O'Keefe: "A big part of what we're trying to do is reach people in the way they want to be reached. So if people only want to use their phone — which there's a big segment of the population that's starting to do that — then we need to help them do that. So that was a big driver was what is next to help us reach our patient, more of our patients than we already do."

There are thousands of health–related apps on the market. There's so many of them that the Food and Drug Administration is stepping in to regulate them and make sure they're not making unreasonable claims. The agency has proposed oversight on apps that work with medical devices that are already regulated. This could affect apps that help doctors make a diagnosis.

Wanda Pratt is professor of medical informatics in the School of Information at the University of Washington. She says patients today have more resources available to manage their health. Mobile technology makes information available at their fingertips.

Pratt: "The advantage is that people have their phones with them everywhere. So, for things like reminder applications — where you're trying to remember to take your medicine — or remember to exercise, or whatever it is you're trying to remember that's connected to your health, it's there. You don't have to go to your computer to have it tell you that."

Convenience is nice, but what about security? Pratt says there are technical solutions to make sure information that passes through the airwaves are encrypted. She says the bigger issue is privacy, especially if a third party outside of your clinic holds your health information.

Pratt: "We need some way to make it clear to people — not buried in six pages of legalese — Are they keeping my information, are they sharing my information, can somebody else find out about this even if I don't want them to? I think that transparency could be improved."

And consumers should take time to read the fine print before downloading.

Right now, most smart phone users tend to be 45 years old or younger, but Pratt says that's rapidly changing. It's a matter of time before the age boundaries blur in the smart phone world. For some people, it just takes getting used to the new technology.

So far, Group Health says there have been more than 8,500 downloads of their mobile app. It plans to release another one for Android users.

As more and more medical groups incorporate technology in their practice, Dr. Gwen O'Keefe hopes these systems will become standardized. In the ideal world, all medical providers can share access to patients health information, especially in an emergency.

O'Keefe: "The lack of adequate information sharing probably harms a lot of patients every year. If you turn up unconscious in the ER and you're allergic to penicillin, and they give you penicillin after your major trauma, they're doing the best they can given a complete lack of information about who you are. That's what we're trying to overcome, and work towards a better system."

It was a decade ago that people went online to find answers to their health questions. As people take a more active role in their health, it makes sense that mobile apps are trying to provide another tool to meet that demand. Now, if someone could just come up with an app to get us to eat more vegetables.

I'm Ruby de Luna, KUOW News.