EHR (Electronic Health Records) mobile apps have become the rage and latest frontier in modernizing health records and improving patient care. These mobile portals together with telemedicine, greatly benefit from modern technology and provide improved patient care.
Two giants, Apple and Epic are currently racing to come up with the best EHR mobile app. Who’s winning?
EHR: Apple Vs. Epic
Mobile means a degree of portability and ‘portal’ means that you have a window onto something. In this case, it means, understanding your health and the ability to access your records at any time.
Apple’s Health app will be familiar to iOS users as it contains hallmarks of the contemporary Apple app: simple icons, varied type weights and sizes, rounded corners.
It’s also more thumb-friendly, said Dr. Alistair Erskine, Geisinger Health’s chief informatics officer. “In some of these portals, they just don’t have the aesthetic of using a thumb on a smartphone screen,” he said.
The Health app’s functionality is both broader and more limited than portals made by Epic. In their apps, for instance, patients can send messages to providers and schedule appointments, whereas in Apple’s Health, they cannot.
But in Apple’s Health app, patients can view all their lab results, medication lists, vitals, and other information from participating organizations. Apple’s vendor participation list is currently 39 and expanding. Such patient information is not currently available with the other individual vendors’ apps.
Conclusion
Stay tuned as the competition heats up as more companies enter into the fray. Most important, we already know who the winner is, it’s the patient.