WebMD may be sewing up its dominance in the smartphone-enabled clinical education space, launching two new versions of its Medscape Mobile product for iPads and Android phones. This comes more than seven months after the company's initial foray into the iPad market, and nearly a year and a half after Medscape launched its iPhone mobile service.
That's in addition to existing apps already working on iPhones and Blackberry devices. Total users so far: 700,000, a number WebMD indicates should skyrocket with the addition of iPad and Android platforms. The mobile version of Medscape already was named the "most downloaded" free medical app last year by Apple.
The Mobile version provides a drug reference database, drug interaction checker, clinical reference and treatment guide for 3,400 diseases, clinical procedure guides, CME offerings and professional directories of hundreds of thousands of clinicians nationwide.
Financial analysts indicate WebMD's mobile products are strong drivers' for the company's future growth, which topped $135 million last quarter. Traffic to the WebMD network mushroomed 41 percent in 2010, a trend that's expected to continue in 2011, according to financial blogger and author Sramana Mitra.
The company also is working on another app to be launched this year offering a fully personalized view of WebMD health information "most closely related to the user's health status," Mitra says.
To learn more about WebMD's plans:
- here's their press release
- read Mitra's blog post
- check out this Softpedia post