Apps and Students
There was a super interesting thread on twitter where people were sharing the apps they're working on in anticipation of WWDC 2021. A few caught my eye, especially these five health related apps.
It's Monday, so me and the kiddos will be practicing coding later. On the way to school, the conversation turned to this afternoon's practice and it finally clicked for Evie:
Wait, I can make apps? You mean, like the apps that run on my iPad?
Yeah! I could see the gears working in her brain. The questions started coming, and as is typical, she was working things out linearly through this line of questioning.
It's a fun way to start the day and part of the gift of being able to walk them to school
WWDC
With WWDC approaching, Steve Troughton-Smith, a popular Apple developer posted a question on Twitter:
With just one month left before WWDC, show off what you've been working on to share a little inspiration.
The replies have been outstanding.
There's an app I'm anxiously awaiting for stock tracking built by a designer at Twitter. It looks gorgeous and I've been following his development progress with envy. It's called Stocketa.
Mostly, I loved seeing the humility of people sharing a little of their stories. The little bits that they were hoping to finish before WWDC. The way they're following their curiousity to learn something, and maybe create something others can use.
Here's a person who's combining their love of space with an opporunity to learn to code:
My latest side project is a simple but beautiful application to learn a little more about the moons around our solar system.https://t.co/y9tHO6vJOn pic.twitter.com/4bkVIR10ON
— Francisco 🧲 (@FranciscoMkdir) May 9, 2021
And another who's scratching her own itch, a good habit to build:
Finally for non-health related apps, for budding chemists:
Health Related Innovation
What caught my attention though were the number of health related apps. I've long thought that Apple's use of FHIR for health data is such a huge opportunity:
I talk about Apple Pay and Apple Health a lot. Apple Health is a few years behind the Apple Pay roll-out. And, considering that Apple Health uses FHIR, I like to point out that Axway has a solution to add value… and we can assume that Apple Health will follow the trajectory of Apple Pay — meaning lots of countries and lots of care providers over the next few years. Don’t look at today… look at the trajectory to define the opportunity. (November 21, 2019)
So here's a list of apps to check out that I pulled from the thread.
I can't imagine going to years and years of school for the benefit of working through the insurance companies to help people. Maybe instead of medical school you can learn to code instead, and help people faster?
Seriously though. Anyone who's worked with me over the last six years or so knows how I feel about Electronic Health Record innovation. I still talk about being asked to leave a large healthcare system in Texas where I was told in no uncertain terms that I "missed the boat on mobile" because they "solved mobile by converting all their web pages to responsive formats".
It's not just the apps, it's the jobs we're hiring technology to do for us related to keeping us healthy. As the world changes around us, the healthcare companies whose doctors we count on, can't figure out the most simple of ways to help people stay healthy. It's beyond my understanding how they can be so negligent.
The above five applications are by no means a comprehensive list. I haven't even tried them all (thankfully, I don't have diabetes or heart issues). They are, however, gorgeous apps that are well communicated to their audiences and put hospital IT solutions to shame.
