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| The Cardiac Designs ECG Check APP reads a heart rhythm when paired with an iPhone. |
Cardiologist Eric Topol had just taken a seat on a cross-country flight last June when he received an urgent e-mail from a patient. The 63-year-old man’s heart was racing and he wanted to know what to do about it.
Receiving data from the patient’s $99 i-Phone app that analyzes heart rhythms, Topol was able to dispense advice --take a higher dose of medicine -- and calm his patient, who suffers from a dangerous condition called atrial fibrillation.
“It’s good I got on the Internet on the plane, otherwise he would not have had an answer for a long time,” said Topol, a genomics professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California who prescribed his patient an ECG Check app made by Park City, Utah-based Cardiac Designs. “Many times this helps keep a person from having to go to an emergency room.”
Devices once only in the hands of doctors, such as heart or blood pressure monitors, are now in the pockets of consumers, putting them in charge of their health and making medical care more accessible. Consumers are also increasingly armed with “wellness” apps -- simpler devices to monitor diets, exercise and weight to help them stay out of the doctor’s office -- that make up most of the 97,000 health related mobile-apps available.
The market for these apps is estimated to reach $26 billion by 2017, according to a March report by Research2Guidance, a Berlin-based consulting company. Most of the revenue will come from related services and products, such as monitoring devices and sensors, with just 9 percent of sales coming from downloads of the applications in the next five years, the report said.
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