What Apple’s new product announcement means for healthcare providers
As Apple’s EHR partner in their Mobility Partner Program (MPP), DrChrono team was very excited to hear about the latest product announcements on iPhone X, Apple Watch and other technologies. Today’s announcement helped solidify our focus and ability to provide a more modern, personal healthcare experience for providers and patients.
Yesterday, Apple had an event at the Steve Jobs Theater, where they announced a number of new features and products. From their best ever Apple Series 4 Smartwatch to their brand new iOS 12 operating system for iPhone and iPad, the new rollout is an exciting step in the right direction at developing hardware to meet needs within the medical field. With a number of enhancements to their phone series, the new iPhone X and Apple Watch will make DrChrono mobility features more powerful for our providers.
Here’s what DrChrono users can be excited about for what is to come to DrChrono EHR.
Pull patient ECG reports right into DrChrono EHR
The new Apple Watch Series 4 will come with a new electrical heart sensor around the optic heart sensors on the back of the watch. This never before seen feature will allow consumers to get ECG readings in real time right from their watch.
By touching the digital crown dial for 30 seconds, users will be able to get accurate readings of their heart. From these readings the Apple Watch Series 4 will be able to identify irregular heart rhythms, otherwise known as atrial fibrillation. All readings will be saved as a pdf in the Apple Health app. These reports can then be exported and providers on DrChrono EHR will be able to attach these PDFs directly into the patient’s chart.
With this new feature as well as Fall Detection and Low Heart Rate Detection, Apple has empowered patients to provide providers data outside of standard visits, giving them more visibility into their patient’s overall health and allow the physicians to provide higher quality care.
Ask Siri to Help
The Apple team announced a new Siri feature on iOS 12 called Siri Shortcuts. With Siri Shortcuts, Siri has gained a greater ability to assist users in their everyday tasks. Using various features on iPhone and apps, Siri can be instructed to perform several commands, all using voice.
We are committed on bringing Siri Shortcuts to DrChrono EHR and allowing our providers to bypass time consuming tasks, leading to an increase in productivity and giving providers more time to focus on their patients.
The revolutionary A12 Bionic Chip
The new hardware in the iPhone X series phones will have the world’s first 7nm chip that boasts more power than all preceding Apple phones before it. The exponential growth in performance and capabilities comes from the Neural Engine, this will make the iPhone experience more powerful than it has ever been and expand the possibilities to a level not seen before.
With a more powerful chip, DrChrono EHR will become lighter and faster, and will have more room for growth which we are excited to explore and enable for our providers.
Super Retina provides even better visual display for providers
Apple also announced their new flagship series of iPhones – the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. All of the iPhones have new and improved Super and Liquid Retina displays which provide even higher pixels per inch (PPI) resolution. This will be incredibly powerful for providers who take pictures during encounters and view DICOM images from within the EHR.
Core ML 2
Machine learning is a huge special interest for the healthcare industry, and Apple has released a new version of their Core ML framework which enables machine learning across Apple products, including Siri, Camera, and QuickType. Core ML 2 allows the iPhone to perform operations substantially faster, up to 9x faster, allowing not only faster computing but also more sophisticated operations.
Healthcare has an endless list of use cases for machine learning, and we are actively exploring the possibilities now available with this new framework for DrChrono EHR.
The iPhone X series will all be released over the next few weeks, with iOS 12 following right behind. These new products and technologies to come from Apple will continue to empower us to truly design essential medical technology that makes care more informed, personalized, interactive, and adaptable. The possibilities are endless and we are very excited to explore what we will be able to do for DrChrono providers and patients.
Be sure to read more here about iOS 12, and other updates. If you’re not a DrChrono user yet, you can request a demo below and one of our product specialists would be happy to provide a full demo of DrChrono EHR platform.