They've got an app for that—and that, and that…

We reported recently on a memo issued by President Barack Obama last week to all federal agency and department heads requiring them to come up with at least two mobile device applications using government data.

Stories about the memo, widening the use of the Veteran's Affairs Department Blue Button patient download technology, and a new national mobile technology strategy appear here and, with some industry IT mavens' reactions, here.

I queried HHS about what it had in mind to meet the president's two-app goal, and the department responded, but not in time to meet our deadline for the above stories.

But since HHS and its various agencies already have a bunch of cool apps—and more are on the way—I thought I'd mention a few of them here.

One is SmokeFreeTXT built for teens and young adults and produced by the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, and a related smartphone app, QuitStart.

The National Library of Medicine has its Health Hotlines, what one HHS staffer described as “a gallery of mobile apps and mobile-optimized websites” to make available to the peregrinating public information on literally hundreds of topics, from gambling addiction to the heartbreak of psoriasis.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has its CDC Mobile Health Tips SMS program that sends enrollees 12 health-related text messages a month on timely topics ranging from mold cleanup to tick protection.

A work still in progress is a proposed mobile-app-powered diabetes self-management training program announced last fall by the Office of Minority Health at HHS. The feds went into partnership with the American Association of Diabetes Educators, Baylor University and telecommunications giant AT&T to develop the program. It seeks to test the efficacy of using smartphones to create live video connections among clinicians, community health workers and diabetes patients. The service is targeted for provider shortage areas.

There are several other mobile-app projects on the HHS list, and my apologies to those I didn't mention, but this gives you a sense of what's possible and what the department is doing with your tax dollars.

Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn.