The “O Bar,” compared to Apple’s “Genius Bar” when it launched in July 2014, is a facility at the Ochsner Center for Primary Care and Wellness in New Orleans. Staff at the O Bar teach patients how to manage their health through mHealth apps, showing them how they work on iPads available at the facility, according to WWLTV.
The use of mobile apps is being pushed to keep patients out of the hospital, reducing the facility’s costs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration advocated for app use in a November 2014 presentation as a way to reduce hospital readmission rates. Ochsner is also using information from apps to update patient records, synching its EHR to Apple’s Healthkit.
“The leading causes of chronic disease are primarily lifestyle, so if we can do some things to fundamentally attack the root cause, then we’ve got a good way of making you stay healthy,” Richard Milani, MD, the Ochsner Transformation Officer and vice chairman of the Department of Cardiology, told WWLTV.
