Smartphone applications with sensors used in a tertiary hospital-current status and future challenges

Smartphones have been widely used recently to monitor heart rate and activity, since they have the necessary processing power, non-invasive and cost-effective sensors, and wireless communication capabilities. Consequently, healthcare applications (apps) using smartphone-based sensors have been highlighted for non-invasive physiological monitoring. In addition, several healthcare apps have received FDA clearance. However, in spite of their potential, healthcare apps with smartphone-based sensors are mostly used outside of hospitals and have not been widely adopted for patient care in hospitals until recently. In this paper, we describe the experience of using smartphone apps with sensors in a large medical center in Korea. Among >20 apps developed in our medical center, four were extensively analyzed ("My Cancer Diary", "Point-of-Care HIV Check", "Blood Culture" and "mAMIS"), since they use smartphone-based sensors such as the camera and barcode reader to enter data into the electronic health record system. By analyzing the usage patterns of these apps for data entry with sensors, the current limitations of smartphone-based sensors in a clinical setting, hurdles against adoption in the medical center, benefits of smartphone-based sensors and potential future research directions could be evaluated.