Smartphone applications with sensors used in a tertiary hospital-current status and future challenges.
Smartphones have been widely used recently to monitor heart rate and activity, since they have the necessary processing power, non-invasive and cost-effective sensors, and wireless communication capabilities. Consequently, healthcare applications (apps) using smartphone-based sensors have been highlighted for non-invasive physiological monitoring. In addition, several healthcare apps have received FDA clearance. However, in spite of their potential, healthcare apps with smartphone-based sensors are mostly used outside of hospitals and have not been widely adopted for patient care in hospitals until recently. In this paper, we describe the experience of using smartphone apps with sensors in a large medical center in Korea. Among >20 apps developed in our medical center, four were extensively analyzed ("My Cancer Diary", "Point-of-Care HIV Check", "Blood Culture" and "mAMIS"), since they use smartphone-based sensors such as the camera and barcode reader to enter data into the electronic health record system. By analyzing the usage patterns of these apps for data entry with sensors, the current limitations of smartphone-based sensors in a clinical setting, hurdles against adoption in the medical center, benefits of smartphone-based sensors and potential future research directions could be evaluated.
Clinical Research Center, Asan Medical Center, Seoul 138-736, Korea. yurang.park@amc.seoul.kr.
Yu Rang
YR
Park
Department of Biomedical Informatics, Asan Medical Center, Seoul 138-736, Korea. haepary@naver.com.
Yura
Y
Lee
Division of Nursing Science, College of Health Science, Ewha Womans University, Seoul 120-750, Korea. finside00@gmail.com.
Guna
G
Lee
Department of Biomedical Informatics, Asan Medical Center, Seoul 138-736, Korea. rufiji@gmail.com.|Ubiquitous Health Center, Asan Medical Center, Seoul 138-736, Korea. rufiji@gmail.com.|Department of Emergency Medicine, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul 138-736, Korea. rufiji@gmail.com.|Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02467, USA. rufiji@gmail.com.
Jae Ho
JH
Lee
Department of Biomedical Informatics, Asan Medical Center, Seoul 138-736, Korea. sooyong.shin@amc.seoul.kr.|Ubiquitous Health Center, Asan Medical Center, Seoul 138-736, Korea. sooyong.shin@amc.seoul.kr.
Soo-Yong
SY
Shin
D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D040421:Cell Phone; D063731:Mobile Applications; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic; D062606:Tertiary Care Centers