Seeking a second opinion in a clinical setting is often as easy as walking into the next room and asking a colleague. However, it can become much more challenging for those physicians conducting home visits or operating as solo practitioners.

ClickCare says it has a solution. Doctors can use their iPhones to snap photos and send them via the Internet to fellow colleagues on the ClickCare network. This will help those doctors receive instant answers. The mobile consultation allows doctors to prescribe appropriate courses of treatment without having to unnecessarily relocate patients.

According to ClickCare, the consultations are reimbursable. The service is subscription based and it works with both the iPhone and digital camera and computer. ClickCare also maintains a HIPAA-compliant searchable list on the site, which allows other users to scroll through pictures and look at cases similar to the own.

Another application, Nuance’s Dragon Medical Mobile Search, gives doctors a way to search a variety of medical websites on the fly. The application, which is completely voice activated, requires an iPhone or a 3rd generation iPod Touch (with external microphone) and a WiFi or 3G/EDGE network connection.

Dragon Medical Mobile search gives physicians answers to drug-to-drug interaction questions, new medication information, treatment action and ICD-9 codes. Doctors speak their questions and are provided with results from a variety of websites like IMO, Medline, Drugs.mobi, Medscape and Google. Doctors can then modify the search query using a list of alternative suggestions.

Security is not a problem, the company says. Dragon Medical Search does not upload or store any personal information, nor does it use any personal data from the phone. All search queries are processed by the speech recognition technology and subject to stringent privacy and security standards.