Thursday, March 21, 2013, 02:10 pm

Cleveland Clinic prescribes new iPad app for patients, visitors

By Kevin Bostic

The Cleveland Clinic is renowned for its standards of care and cost efficiency, and this month it furthered its reputation as a leader in health information technology, introducing its tenth app, developed exclusively for Apple's iPad.


The Cleveland Clinic's new app, Today, provides users with access to their electronic medical record (EMR) through "MyChart," as well as a means to request appointments and find doctors within the Clinic. It also includes a health and wellness tips, healthy recipes, quizzes, and videos.

In a PR release (via mobihealthnews) for the app, the Cleveland Clinic describes Today as a "one-stop-shop" for health and wellness information. It includes a 3D model of the human body, allowing for navigation of the body's bones, muscles, joints, and other organs, with additional information on each body part available with a tap.Users can also share articles via email, Facebook, and Twitter.

Anyone with a compatible device can download the app, but its full feature set — including EMR access and appointment scheduling — is reserved to Cleveland Clinic patients. The app is currently exclusive to iPad and iPhone users, but Cleveland Clinic recently announced that it is exploring the potential of a Windows 8 launch of its mobile apps.

Aimed at providing a user-friendly interface for accessing health content, the app is the tenth from Cleveland Clinic Innovations. The hospital's developer group has also released three other apps for the iPad: Innovations, Cancer Trials, and Heart Story.

Today is available as a free download in the App Store. The 46.3MB download has both an iPad and an iPhone version, and it requires a device running iOS 5.0 or higher.