EHSI moving to use iPhone 4 FaceTime feature with its medical apps

HOUSTON, USA: Emerging Healthcare Solutions Inc. disclosed that Company management is moving to incorporate Apple’s new FaceTime video chat feature into its comprehensive MedAnywhere medical iPhone app and modules currently in development.

FaceTime, one of the main new features of Apple’s latest iPhone offering, is designed to provide simple, easy-to-use video-chatting capabilities to cellular users.

Although the technology currently requires iPhone 4 and only works over Wi-Fi, the company has stated that it plans on making its underlying protocols an open standard and work with mobile providers to include support for cellular data at a later date. VITEB is EHSI’s development partner on the MedAnywhere app project.

“The ability for a monitoring physician to actually see the patient in real time while communicating should broaden the functionality of the MedAnywhere medical application,” stated Cindy Morrissey, President of EHSI. “We won’t have this feature available for the HHC Module app release – at least at first. However, we do anticipate incorporating it into the app at a later date.”

The HHC Module is a Hemochromatosis Monitoring Sub-module of the comprehensive MedAnywhere Medical Application, which is owned by EHSI. The company is planning to roll out several sub-modules of the MedAnywhere application for testing and marketing before the full comprehensive version of the MedAnywhere app will be completed and released.

EHSI took the lead in the mobile telemedicine industry through their prior licensing and development of an extraordinary ambulance trauma cellular communications platform. This system was originally the brainchild of Dr. Red Duke and was funded through a $20 million US Department of Defense grant to the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston. UT then engaged Texas A&M to fully develop the system.

The iPhone 4 is a portable data device produced by Apple. It allows users to download and operate ‘applications’ that empower the portable device to deliver a wide variety of additional services. The iPhone competes with Google's Android system and with Research-in-Motion’s Blackberry phones. The emerging medical technology sector also includes Medtronic.