WSJournal #5. Health in the Palm of your Hand.

WSJournal #5. Health in the Palm of your Hand.

There's a good chance that you already own one of the most ubiquitous health-care innovations: a smartphone. Last month, the FDA cleared a new iPhone add-on that lets doctors take an electrocardiogram just about anywhere. Other smartphone apps help radiologists read medical images and allow patients to track moles for signs of skin cancer.

"I see the smartphone as one piece of how we're going to try to get health costs under control," says David Albert, the Oklahoma City-based inventor of the just-approved AliveCor electrocardiogram application.

At $199, AliveCor consists of a case that snaps onto the iPhone, with electrodes on the back. It reads heart rhythms and relays the recording to an iPhone app, allowing physicians to read the data. Dr. Albert says a $99 version should be available soon that will let patients capture their own heart data, documenting sometimes-fleeting arrhythmias when they feel symptoms or tracking the success of lifestyle changes at curbing heart troubles.

Doctors say that mainstream EKG machines provide more information but the iPhone version is sufficient for many diagnostic needs. "When I go to [the] clinic, I use it in place of an EKG all the time," says Leslie Saxon, chief of the University of Southern California's heart-rhythm department, which has conducted research using AliveCor's device.

The FDA has cleared a handful of apps, beginning with an iPad and iPhone-based medical imaging reader in 2011. The smartphone lets us "bring health care into the home," says Erik Douglas, CEO of CellScope. His company is developing an iPhone-based otoscope that would allow parents to upload images of their children's inner ears when they show signs of infections, with the aim of avoiding unnecessary doctors visits.