Electronic health record vendor Epic has just released Haiku, an iPhone application that provides authorized users with secure access to schedules, patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes.

The app is a free download on iTunes, but the user must belong to an organization that licenses Haiku and is currently on Epic's Summer 2009, according to the product description on iTunes.

Haiku was released on Jan. 8 with relatively little fanfare. In fact, a perusal of the Epic Web site doesn't even mention its release. According to Mobihealthnews' Brian Dolan, who first reported on Haiku's appearance in the iTunes store on Wednesday, rumors about the app have been floating around for three months. That's when the Wall Street Journal first reported an iPhone pilot project at Stanford Hospital & Clinics that enabled staff to access patient charts.

So far, there are no user reviews published on the iTunes store, nor are there any customer ratings yet.

Haiku, of course, isn't the only health records app in the iTunes store. In fact, there are nearly 1,800 free and paid apps in the store's medical section. Most are consumer-facing applications that cover a variety of interest ranging from emergency scanners to weight-loss programs. However, the top two free applications are Medscape and Epocrates, which have clinical uses.

Among electronic health records on the iTunes store, most are personal health records that are unaffiliated with a enterprise vendor. Allscripts, the Chicago-based EHR vendor, showed an iPhone application at HIMSS09 that has been available to clinicians via iTunes for about ten months. Allscripts Remote is currently at version 1.0.38 and has 258 ratings.

Like the Haiku offering, the free Allscripts Remote includes a patient summary, prescription list, notes, tasks and reminders for users of Allscripts EHR.

Photos by William Hook obtained via Creative Commons license.