Health apps – bringing order to chaos?

There’s rarely a shortage of mobile health news these days, but a couple of developments over the last month transcended the general noise about mHealth.

A new NHS online library of health apps and promises from the US FDA that guidance on medical smartphone apps will arrive before the end of this year threaten, as my column in the April issue of PME put it, to bring some order to the chaos of mHealth apps.

That said, initiatives like the NHS library, Happtique’s mobile app certification programme, Apple’s new lists of apps for healthcare professionals and my own pharma mobile app listing in the Digital Handbook, to name but a few, could soon have us asking who will curate the curators.

Elsewhere the April issue’s features included an interview with Novo Nordisk’s Peter Meeus and an engaging look at some emerging models for pharmaceutical businesses.

• Read April’s PME online

Virtual museums – a window to the world

The Google Art Project, which I stumbled across recently, is an amazing undertaking, providing instant access to pictures from some of world’s most renowned galleries.

There are also Street View depictions of places like the National Gallery in London, the National Museum in Delhi and even The White House.

Do QR codes and billboards mix?

Thus far I’m somewhat ambivalent towards QR codes, those 2D bar codes that are increasingly featured on ads, posters and billboards.

Apple: over 15 billion apps downloaded

Downloads from Apple’s App Store have passed 15 billion, according to the latest figures for the company’s mobile devices and apps.

Strip out the hyperbole – and ‘exciting’, ‘amazing’, ‘successful’, ‘coolest’ and ‘incredible’ all feature in the short press release – and the rest of the figures show:

• More than 200 million iPhones, iPad and iPod touch devices have been sold worldwide

Tate brings Joan Miro exhibition to the iPhone

Your phone may well already serve as an mp3 player, camera, address book and have any number of other app-fueled uses, so it’s little surprise to see art gallery guidebook added to the list.

This week the Tate launched an iPhone/iPad app for its retrospective of the Spanish surrealist painter Joan Miro.

An interesting use of the technology, it’s the Tate’s third exhibition app – following themed apps for its Gauguin and Muybridge shows last year – and is intended as part visitor guide, part memento.

Google goes local with mobile location-based news

Photo by Spencer E Holtaway (flickr.com/photos/spencereholtaway) some rights reserved

The regular requests for my location have so far been the most annoying feature of Google’s otherwise useful iPhone app.

Now this hitherto unexplained – and constant – request starts to make (a little) sense as Google pushes into local, location-based news for mobiles.

News Near You is a new feature on Google’s mobile app that analyses both the content of a story and the location of the source to find news about particular cities and their surrounding area.