An Early Trip Through the Windows Phone 7 App Store

Until the iPhone, most medical professionals worked entirely in the Microsoft ecosystem, maybe with Blackberry hooked into Exchange support. Windows Mobile had a substantial market presence in the healthcare industry, with great (for its time) software from Epocrates and Skyscape before they were called Apps. Now, with the Windows Phone 7 debut we thought it was a good idea to look through their early app offerings and see if any of the old standbys made it over, and what new players were on the scene.
In short: nada. Again, this is an early look into the Windows Phone 7 offerings, but the phone is for sale in the US. To look through the Windows Phone 7 marketplace requires a download of the hefty Zune software (comparable to a full iTunes install in size), there is no web interface. Once inside, and after telling the software to leave your music alone, there are very sparse offerings for the medical professional. Just a few BMI calculators and several personal health trackers. No Epocrates, no Skyscape, no UnboundMedicine, all of which have Windows Mobile 6 versions. It is unclear if these developers are working on Windows Phone 7 versions, or waiting to see if demand is there. We have emailed in to Microsoft asking. Also, we didn’t see any indications that there would be support for Microsoft HealthVault, or hospital EMRs.
Microsoft seems to be doing a soft rollout to the healthcare industry and is working on bumping up consumer demand rather than industry specific marketing. We hope to hear from them and individual developers in the coming weeks.
Link: Windows Phone…