Mobile apps on rise

Of the wide-ranging 100,000 iPhone apps, approximately 2,000 are healthcare related, according to an overview by the mHealth Initiative of the exploding field of clinical and consumer healthcare applications available on mobile devices (mDevices). Close to an additional 3,000 healthcare applications are available for other types of smart phones.

Some of these 5,000 healthcare applications have widespread adoption. Epocrates, for example, reports more than 100,000 users just on the iPhone and, when taking into account access through other devices, a worldwide subscriber base of 750,000.