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The VA Medical Center (VAMC) in Birmingham, Ala., an acute tertiary care facility, will provide nurse case managers with integrated mobile electronic health records. The technology will make it possible for home-based primary care nurses to schedule case loads as well as access and input patient information. The technology, called HB Mobile, was developed by Juneau, Fla.-based DSS, Inc. The Veterans Integrated Service Network 7 (VISN 7) selected the Birmingham center in August 2009 as the alpha test site for HB Mobile.

A new survey sponsored by the National Alliance for Caregiving and UnitedHealthcare highlights the ways emerging technologies can alleviate the financial and emotional burdens on family members caring for sick or disabled loved ones.The report, The e-Connected Family Caregiver: Bringing Caregiving into the 21st Century, released Saturday, found more than two-thirds of family caregivers who have used some form of technology to help them with caregiving believe Web-based and mobile technologies would be helpful to them.

Mobile technology has become an must-have tool for Walgreens, which bills itself as the nation's largest drugstore chain. The company now offers mobile applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, featuring text alerts for more than 1 million subscribers and a function that allows patients to scan the bar code of their prescription to send in refills.

Mobile medical apps are slowly gaining market share as 2010 revenues are expected to more than double compared to 2009, according to a new report by healthcare market research publisher Kalorama Information.Kalorama's report, the "Worldwide Market for Mobile Medical Apps," finds that in 2009 the market was worth about $41 million, which translates to about 1.5 percent of the total mobile app market. Kalorama estimates sales for 2010 to come in at $84.1 million.