Looks like we aren't the only ones excited by the iPhone's potential application to medicine. Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle tells the story of Steven Cheng, tech savy-primary care doc, who collected over 800 signatures in a petition trying to convince Apple to make it's latest iPhone 3G compatible with Epocrates Rx—free software that puts important drug information and clinical support at a doctor's fingertips.

Cheng's prayers (if not the specific petition he hand-delivered to Apple's headquarters in Cupertino) were answered. As our colleague Elena Harman noted, Epocrates was one of the applications prominently featured in demonstrations of the new iPhone. (See a demonstration of its "drug identifier" function here.) Already the program is one of the most popular applications with more than 120,000 downloads since the new iPhone's release last month.

Just to be clear, we're not trying to shill for Apple or Epocrates. We don't have an iPhone and our own cellular device is so old we have to text in Sanskrit. What interests us more is the excitement of doctors, like Cheng, and their eagerness to implement information technology to practice of medicine. It gives us hope that someday such zeal will apply to more aspects of health IT. People wait in line a few hours for a new phone, but we've waited too long for the promises of health IT to become a reality.