Mount Sinai platform makes prescribing apps easy

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has launched an enterprise-wide platform allowing doctors to prescribe apps to patients just like they would a medication.

Called RxUniverse, the platform provides an “app store” of curated, evidence-based applications that’s incorporated into the New York City-based health system’s digital prescription delivery system.

As described in a video, a physician can go into a patient’s digital medical record, select an app and have a link to it sent to the patient’s smartphone:

Mount Sinai launched a pilot of the platform in August at five clinical areas with a goal of having 100 apps prescribed in six weeks, yet providers and patients alike embraced it, and more than 2,000 apps were ordered.

The platform eliminates the problem of finding effective health apps from the hundreds of thousands on the market, makes prescribing them easy for clinicians, and offers a way to help patients take more control of their health, according to an announcement.

The technology also can be used to provide educational content, patient satisfaction surveys, and other tools that can be sent digitally to individual patients or population groups.

The Sinai AppLab, which created the platform, and Mount Sinai Innovation Partners have teamed up to launch a startup company called Responsive Health that will commercialize RxUniverse for use at other health systems.

Startup Happtique was working on a similar vetted app catalog in 2012. It ultimately was acquired by Las Vegas-based digital health company SocialWellth, which offers private, healthcare-focused app stores.