WebMD launched its Medscape mobile app for iPad and Android. The app, previously available on iPhone and BlackBerry, has seen 700,000 healthcare professional registrations, and it was the top free medical app of the year for iPhone.

Nearly half of all US adults—48%, or 112 million—used the internet for drug information in 2010, according to Manhattan Research, which found that older consumers are now joining their younger counterparts in searching for medical info online. That’s more than double the 55 million Americans searching for drug info online in 2005. The research firm said it found that consumers are more likely to discuss the information they glean online with their doctors than they are to act unilaterally on it, and consumers “are considerably more likely to use pharma product and corporate websites for prescription drug information than government websites, pharmacy websites, patient association websites and social media sources.”

A CVS Caremark survey of four decades of medical journal articles on how health information technology and electronic communications may impact adherence found few studies that show how HIT can be used to boost compliance.