The UK Department of Health ran an interesting exercise lately, called Maps and Apps. They looked at a range of mobile apps to cover general wellness and the most common health conditions like diabetes.

With more than 25 billion apps being downloaded from Apple’s iTunes alone (and Android following closely) this was only a matter of time. Go to iTunes or Android Marketplace and you will see tons of apps for general well-being or more specific conditions such as diabetes.

Mobile innovation is also hitting health care professionals, and new apps are being delivered to hospitals, clinics and surgeries all the time.

This is all very encouraging. But I think the true innovation really lies in hooking up patients with their medical team through mobile technologies.

Let’s take iStayHealthy as an example: as a user I put my results, medication and other details into the app. The clinic I go to has its own system, where it stores my data. There is no connection.

Building this connection would not only help me but the clinic as well. Once your HIV condition is stable, managing it should be straight-forward. I don’t particularly want to go to clinics unless I really have to, and clinics should really focus their attention on patients most in need. Integrating mobile patient-oriented apps with clinical services would be a big step in that direction.