Smartphone Apps to Manage Health

We had written a few days ago about how the Smartphone is being used to make payments instead of credit cards. 

Today the Smartphone can be used as a tool to monitor and manage a host of existing medical conditions. Hundreds of apps have been developed which can help you manage your health for just pennies a day. Even managing heart health is getting convenient thanks to the several hundred apps developed for Android, iPhone, Blackberry and other Smartphones.

Here are some of them:

1. Blood Pressure: A blood pressure cuff developed by French company Withings helps patients monitor their BP and send the readings via their iPhone to an online database. The readings can then be monitored by a doctor. Earlier similar apps also helped make graphs and offered medical suggestions.

2. Heart Rate: With help of special apps your phone can be converted into a pulse checker. A company called Azumio has developed an app for 99¢ that uses the camera of the smartphone to measure the heart rate via your index finger.

3. Medication reminder: An app called Pill Phone reminds patients with a ‘ping’ and picture of medication to be taken at certain times of the day; an application that will definitely be helpful to senior patients.

4. General health- Apps to help you make right dietary decisions , count calories, ease stress, calculate a person’s risk of having a heart attack , give guidelines to perform CPR , and contact medical personnel  during emergency are just few of the hundreds of apps developed to manage health and well being of patients.

With this trend it is inevitable that smartphones are playing a very important role in the healthcare field. FDA has stepped in and announced its decision regulate some of these apps to ensure that they indeed will work as intended.