Mastodon Steal This Idea: Hospice and Palliative Care App Reviews ~ Pallimed

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Steal This Idea: Hospice and Palliative Care App Reviews

by Christian Sinclair

This is part of an ongoing series where we share ideas that we would love to see implemented, but frankly don't have the time to actually accomplish. But if a smart person with a little extra time like yourself were to steal this idea, you might find an audience, and maybe some people might be willing to throw a few bucks behind it. Heck, if you can pull it off, we would love to help promote it or if you want to guarantee a built in audience we can officially make it a part of the Pallimed Network. 

Idea: Hospice and Palliative Care* App reviews

*This idea could really work for any specialty

Smartphones and tablets. Lots of people have them and we use them to play games, message our friends and family, participate in Tweetchats (shameless plug!), and oh yeah, to make us more productive at work.

I've been sitting on this idea for at least 5 years, when I created the first Pallimed apps for iOS and Android. To do some research, I started collecting apps from various hospice organizations to see how they used the technology.  I branched out from there to collect other health care related apps, that could be utilized by patients and families. Many of these apps have very few ratings, especially when compared with Clash of Clans or whatever app of the moment is, so it makes it difficult to tell the utility.

But what if we had a group of individuals willing to try out different apps and give all of us palliative advocates a better understanding of how it might work for us?

Eric Widera over at GeriPal (read, subscribe, comment if you don't already!) recently posted a list of multiple apps and online tools from a presentation at the American Geriatrics Society 2015 meeting. Look you already have a list of apps to review!  No need to go hunting. Let's review the VitalTalk app or the Health Communications app. So many out there. I also have a list of over 50, I have tried that I would share to help you get started. You could even look at non-health care apps focused on productivity and other functions for the busy clinician!

And really this is a win-win. The developers of these apps want people to benefit from them, and we want to make computers work for us to make our lives better, easier, and more awesome.

Audience: Hospice and palliative care clinicians, patients and families
Difficulty: Easy to Medium
Crowdsourcing: High possibility (tell people what app you will be reviewing and have them try it out the same week, so they can comment on your review)
Cost - Financial: Many of the apps are free, some may cost $1-5,
Cost - Time: Trying out app - 30-90 min over a week; Writing up a review 1-2 hours
Revenue potential: Minimal - might be able to find a few patrons to help fund purchasing apps
Online tools needed:
    - Tablet and smartphone: Helpful to have access to iOS and Android versions
    - Gather crowdsourced reviews: Google Forms, SurveyMonkey or similar
    - ^Website (basic): Can use Pallimed or get your own for under $12/year
    - ^Newsletter service: Mailchimp or similar
    - ^Payment (if needed to purchase apps): PayPal, Apple Pay or similar
^ - optional

Expansion ideas: None identified.

If there is an app you think we should review leave it in the comments on this post.


Photo Credit: "Steal This Idea" by Christian Sinclair is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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