Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is now offering an Apple Watch app, becoming one of the first U.S. hospitals to do so.
According to a report in AppleInsider, “Bundled alongside Cedars-Sinai's iPhone app, the Watch app mainly lets users locate nearby clinics and other facilities, and get directions. Users can also, however, bring up a list of doctors found in recent iPhone searches and call them from their Watch, a feature likely made more useful by the introduction of cellular in the Apple Watch Series 3.” The free app pairs with a consumer’s iPhone and can be found in the App Store by searching “Cedars-Sinai My CS-Link.”
“By expanding access to the Cedars-Sinai app on the Apple Watch, we can bring a whole new level of accessibility to our patients," Matthew Pufall, mobile product manager at Cedars-Sinai,” said in a statement. "We invite staff to download and explore the apps, because our goal is to become ambassadors for the digital tools and innovative features Cedars-Sinai uses to improve the patient experience."
Cedars-Sinai has regularly been quick to adopt Apple technologies in the past; it added HealthKit to support to its electronic health record (EHR) system in April 2015. It also uses iPads to share data with patients, and let parents stay in touch with newborns when the risk of infection is too high to allow direct contact.
Meanwhile, earlier this week it was announced that Apple was one of nine companies chosen for a pilot pre-clearance program by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That could let Apple push harder into the medical space with products like the Apple Watch, since it won't have to go through the full FDA approval process for new technologies, according to the AppleInsider report.
