GigaOM Pro

Kaiser Permanente made headlines this morning with the release of a smartphone app that enables its 9 million patients to access their own healthcare information on the go. While the news may not be all that surprising in an era where new mobile sites come online everyday, the stakes are higher for Kaiser given the highly sensitive data it is charged with keeping. Enabling users to do things like fill prescriptions and e-mail their doctors from their handsets is a great marketing strategy, and it’s one Kaiser would be wise to advertise aggressively. But as we enter the promising new world of mobile healthcare, those are features that more and more organizations will be rolling out to their users.