Mobile Health Apps Arrive

When Dr. Brian Froelke joined emergency responders in tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo., in May, he brought along a Toshiba smartphone with a hairbrush-size gadget attached. The device, made by Redmond (Wash.) startup Mobisante, converts a phone into a pocket ultrasound machine. Froelke used it to examine a pregnant woman who came to a temporary hospital complaining of stomach pain. “It was helpful to reassure the mom that the baby didn’t have any obvious problems,” Froelke says.

Mobisante’s ultrasound device, which goes on sale in October, is part of a wave of new smartphone apps and attachments in the nascent mobile health market. In the past eight months, products that turn a phone into a blood pressure monitoring cuff, a CT-scan viewer, and other health-care gadgets have received Food and Drug Administration clearance. The market is tiny but expected to grow rapidly: By 2015, 30 percent of the world’s smartphone users will be using mobile health products, up from 5 percent today, estimates mobile market consultancy research2guidance. “Health care will be fundamentally different than it used to be,” says Bakul Patel, a policy adviser at the FDA.