My Own CIO: What Applications are on my iPhone 3G

Friends at a very large software company once referred to me in a category they called “influential end user.” I think that means I have no actual authority regarding purchasing decisions (or anything really), but I can convince people to do things (including change health care maybe?).

I think that’s happened recently with the iPhone, as I just received a note from Richard Baron, MD, from the great ABIM Foundation, who said he heard the words “have to” from my mouth echoing in his head about whether he should get one. The “have to” part is about using what are patients are using, and learning about it with them, rather than telling them not to use what we don’t understand.

So, he got one, and maybe a few other people I recommended the iPhone to did, as well. I thought I’d post which iPhone Applications I’m using on my iPhone to give people a head start. Try them out, see what you think. And kudos to all the health care professionals out there who say “yes” to trying new things so they can perform better for their patients.

MobileMe Photo MobileMe Photo: iPhone 072508

A little info:

  • DC Weather is a hyperlink to the hour-by-hour of Washington, DC. You can customize for your city.
  • Tipr is also a hyperlink to a web-based Tipping application. It gives you the results in palindromes, so you can check for manipulation. Nifty.
  • Remote is Apple’s iTunes and iTV controller. Very cool.
  • RSS is a hyperlink to Google Reader. It’s what I use for RSS now. Well optimized for iPhone and the Web (sorry NetNewsWire, I had to switch…)
  • Where is a helpful assist for my Starbucks-dar. Maybe also useful for Zipcar (when I have to drive, Metro is really my automobile)
  • Loopt and Twinkle are my preferred location aware friendfinders/lifestreamers. Just testing them now.
  • Twitterific is where I post to my Twitterfeed. Give it a try. Follow me.
  • Urban Spoon, Restaurants, and Yelp are my food finders, except I am not much of a foodie, so I am mostly interested in these for their health promotion potential.
  • Mobile News is as it says. I am really not much of a news junkie (Andrew Weil, MD recommended awhile back that too much news is unhealthy, I’d rather just make my own news)
  • Cuberunner is just a game to demonstrate the accelerometer functions – for the “Isn’t this device cool” factor. Thanks to Jody Pettit, MD, fellow i-enthusiast for the tip.
  • 1Password is useful for storing Web passwords securely. It has a built in web browser so will enter them for you.
  • Epocrates is just a cool medical application that shows the promise of the device. Imagine using this as a tool for medication reconciliation and adherence – like how about a patient version, a pharmacist version, a nursing version, that delivers the med list graphically to the patient?
  • AOL Radio and Last.fm are experiments in finding music online.
  • MyLite is the electronic flashlight. I like the rock concert effect. Works really well in a power outage.
  • Google is google. I should use this app more – it does really nice searches of contacts on the phone.

You can get a sense of how I do things from this list, I realized. I don’t have an electronic to-do list, task manager, etc. I’ll post separately about what I do for that. Paper is really good for a lot of things.

What apps am I missing? What do you think of these?

8 Comments

Lets compare Apps to Apps! Here's what we both use:

I use yelp!, Google, ePocrates, and Twitterific – all of which have served me well. Per your twittermendation, I have been using Twinkle for a bit, but haven't found anything that interesting – also use Twitterlator for location. I have loopt but haven't used it, and also have Kyte, which I have yet to use as well.

I think Password and Remote look pretty keen to check out, as well as RSS.

Apps that I like:

Two great music apps are Pandora and Midomi. Pandora is from the Music Genome project and allows you to create stations, that it will populate music for based on your taste (also on Twitter @Pandora_Radio). Midomi "grabs" music from the radio, humming or singing and gives you links to iTunes, YouTube, etc…. It has worked about 65% of the time for me.

Now Playing (formerly Box Office) will find any movies playing within a set radius of your location or zip code. CheckWord is a great app for figuring out if a word is a word for Scrabble. Also use FaceBook, and PhoneSaber (which is just fun to show people).

There are several apps I want to check out, but haven't had the time yet, or have had trouble with, like Qik for video streaming. I do think the iPhone is a great platform for Health 2.0 apps and am looking forward to seeing what happens. The Intelecare iPhone app is coming soon to allow patients and caregivers to create medication reminders natively.

Best,

Alex

Alex,

Thanks (I am looking intto twitterlator and kyte now) and and thanks for the heads up about the Intelecare iPhone app. Is this the first place it's been announced? 🙂 I hope you'll Tweet about it when it's out, I want to try it out for sure,

Ted

I find that I can easily break my apps into two categories: toys or tools. There are a couple main tools I use. I've used epocrates more times that I ever would have imagined. iSSH is an amazing app if you need to access UNIX boxes (as I do for most of my email). Sysadmins are going to fall in love with the iphone, just because of that app. The google app is pretty nice too.

The "toy" apps are just for fiun. Magic8ball has answered many unimportant questions. Shazam has identified songs for me. And Cro-Mag Rally is a guilty pleasure, but it's another cool way to demonstrate the accelerometer (and a great way to kill time while waiting for ferries quite a few times)

Well said, Jay – I think it's good to acknowledge the importance of toys – they extend our understanding of the technology and spark innovation. Adding Magic8Ball to my list,

Ted

Ted, thanks for the mention of our myLite Flashlight and Color Strobe app! It's been downloaded more than 1.1 million times now, in just six weeks. Fyi, we've had radiologists tell us they love using it with the light set to red in the xray room! And we've had users tell us an amazing number of other uses as well….for example, as an emergency flasher in a nighttime auto accident.

We're also very interested in health applications, since part of our management team is based in Rochester, MN – home of the Mayo Clinic. We'll be watching that space closely.

Glad to hear you're twittering! Follow us here: http://www.twitter.com/doapp

cheers,

Graeme

vp marketing

DoApp Inc.
http://www.doapps.com

Right on Graeme,

Any organization that is forward thinking enough to consider the iPhone as an important part of the Health 2.0 revolution is one I want to follow. I love the radiologist story – innovation is about creativity! Keep it coming. Thanks for the comment,

Ted

Hi Ted,

Sinc you've shown me yours, I'll show you mine. The permanent ones:

*Tuner – gets me to most any radio station in the country BUT really means I can access WCPE for 24/7 classical music

*Salesforce – accesses my contact management system

*Epocrates – a longtime favorite that's much improved over the years

*Google – where WOULD I be without it?

*Weather

*Maps

*Linked In

*New York Times

*Hyperlink to Google Reader

The ones I have on there now that I am trying to learn more about their value are all related to health info

*2fat

*QuickPoints

*MyNetDiary

*BMIapp

*Weight Tracker

Two observations:

1. I do have some concern about the health related apps that are similar to concerns for health information on the internet. That has to do with how to discern medical myths from evidence based clinical information.

2) My screen has so much stuff on it that it's become visually distracting…..several have been deleted as a result

Excellent, Betty, thank you! And how cool that you and others are running through the health apps on the iPhone with an eye toward the future. We are all envisioning a bright future for this device, if we leverage it well for patients,

Ted

Ted Eytan, MD