Cedars-Sinai hospital's Apple Watch app lets patients find doctors, locate clinics

Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai offers an Apple Watch app said to be one of the first available from a U.S. hospital, allowing enhanced care for patients directly from their wrist.

Bundled alongside Cedars-Sinai's iPhone app, the Watch app mainly lets users locate nearby clinics and other facilities, and get directions. Users can also, however, bring up a list of doctors found in recent iPhone searches and call them from their Watch, a feature likely made more useful by the introduction of cellular in the Apple Watch Series 3.

The hospital has regularly been quick to adopt Apple technologies, for instance adding HealthKit support to its electronic records system in April 2015. It uses iPads to share data with patients, and let parents stay in touch with newborns when the risk of infection is too high to allow direct contact.

Cedars-Sinai said it's planning to add iPad support to the iPhone app "later this year."

Earlier this week, Apple was picked as just one of nine companies for a pilot pre-clearance program by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. That could let Apple push harder into the medical space with products like the Watch, since it won't have to go through the full FDA approval process for new technologies.