NEJM iPhone app tests docs’ diagnosis skills: The New England Journal of Medicine released its popular Image Challenge, a quiz testing healthcare providers’ ability to diagnose conditions based on photos, for Apple’s (NSDQ:AAPL) iPhone/iPad platform. The app’s features include:
- Optimized for viewing on iPhone or iPod Touch
- Launch or refresh the app for a new selection of random images
- Zoom to take a closer look or move the image within the frame
- Rotate your device to view the images and questions in portrait or landscape mode
- Get immediate feedback – guess correctly and you gain more information about the diagnosis
- See how others answered and how many took the challenge
Review: Google’s Chrome OS notebook: The world of medicine is in the midst of a bubbly love affair with the iPad. From Stanford Medical School, that recently gave their whole incoming class iPads, to ClearPractice’s stunning iPad EMR Nimble, Apple’s thin little tablet is sliding under the doors of hospitals all across the country. And the medical app store has shown tremendous promise as a supporting ecosystem, full of handy clinical tools, live vital sign dashboards, radiology suites, and anatomy learning applications. There is exceptional momentum toward making the iPad THE default clinical computing tool. And for the next 5-10 years, the iPad will, in all likelihood continue to shake up medicine.
But what about long term? Your Medgadget editors recently got a CR-48, Google’s (NSDQ:GOOG) Chrome OS pilot notebook and in between fighting with the bloody awful trackpad, we’ve been thinking hard about how the operating system might fit into the future world of medicine. The hardware is, as other reviewers have already said, good for a pilot machine, but certainly wouldn’t go into production. The relevant details are that sweeping your fingers over the matte finish feels like petting a soft, exotic animal, using the trackpad is frustrating, hammering on the keys gives the sense that you’re using a high quality MacBook keyboard ripoff, and looking at the rather dim screen makes you suddenly think the world is too bright. Yet on the whole, playing with the CR-48 is like peeking into the future – the far, far away future. And though it’s hard to fill in all the details now, there’s a lot of potential for Chrome OS in the world of medicine.
CNET’s mHealth review for 2011: The most up-and-coming means of monitoring personal health today is via cell phone apps. Want to lose weight? Get into shape? Personalize your robot massage? How about keep a poop diary? Or stay on top of your STD status? Yep, there’s an app for all of these, writes CNET News. 
Zephyr wins FDA clearance for remote patient monitor: Zephyr Technology won 510(k) clearance from the Food & Drug Administration for its Physiological Status Monitor (PSM). “This 510(k) approval affirms Zephyr’s solution in the military market and opens significant opportunities with our partners in the burgeoning mHealth arena. Zephyr’s OmniSense Mobile SmartPhone based solution serves a broad array of applications from remote patient monitoring to employee safety. We can now deliver the same technology used to monitor Chilean Miners here in the U.S. to support doctors, providers and concerned family members,” said
Zephyr CEO Brian Russell in prepared remarks (PDF). 
A weekly roundup of new developments in wireless medical technology and mHealth, by MedGadget.com.
