The recent – and much-hyped – launch of Apple’s new 3G iPhone has spurred healthcare IT vendors to launch cell phone-based applications of their own.

Epocrates launched last month its clinical reference application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, available on the Apple App Store. The San Mateo, Calif.-based provider of clinical information and decision-making tools, which launched a Blackberry product last November that now boasts more than 200,000 customers, had been waiting for Apple to develop its new iPhone platform before releasing the new software.

“The iPhone platform is just so much more rich,” said Michelle Snyder, vice president of marketing and strategic planning for Epocrates, who cites multimedia resources that can’t be used on a Blackberry or PDA. “Our value really comes from having updated information at the point of care … and continuing to be the tool that the physician always has with him or her.”

AirStrip Technologies, based in San Antonio, Texas, has launched the AirStrip OB. Already available for use on PDAs and Smartphones, it will allow obstetricians to access real-time and historical waveform data for both the mother and the baby from the hospital’s labor and delivery unit over a cell phone.

Meanwhile, Opus Healthcare Solutions, Inc. of Austin, Texas has launched the latest version of OpusLaboratorySuite, which includes remote reporting, allowing clinicians to view results on a smart phone or PDA via a cell phone network of hospital Wi-Fi connection. And CareTools, Inc. of Westlake Village, Calif. is making its digital medical record system for iPhone and iPod available at the Apple App Store.

The cell phone movement gained ground at the Towards the Electronic Patient Record (TEPR) conference last May in Fort Lauderdale, where more than 2,000 attendees were invited to download mock health data on their cell phones as part of a nine-month-long project to demonstrate portability.

“The cell phone is becoming a digital health companion,” said J. Peter Waegemann, CEO of the Boston-based Medical Records Institute, which sponsors TEPR. “This will be a whole industry that will be developing in the coming year.”

TEPR featured a demonstration of AllOne Health Group, Inc.’s AllOne Mobile secure phone-based application. The Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based developer of services for healthcare purchasers and payers has since deployed AllOne Mobile on a platform developed by Canada’s Diversinet to 350,000 members of Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Other insurance plans are interested in the standards-based approach, which could jump-start the use of personal health records by a broad segment of the population.