Congress passes bill allowing FDA to regulate smartphone apps

This isn't fair. The FDA does a pretty decent job at it's regulation. I'd say we have the best (or near the best) regulated food supply and drug supply of any nation. It's impressive when you consider that the country is also the third largest by population and fourth by land mass.

I develop for one of the countries largest medical software companies ("EHR companies" now, I guess), so I have a little bit of an idea of what medical software does and what the industry wants to do with apps. (And dealing with regulation). Some Telehealth solutions go far beyond just displaying EHR data and help actively manage a patient's health by taking/accepting certain vitals, drug reminders, etc. And apps are going to be doing this / already doing this.

The FDA absolutely is the regulator for medical devices. Here is the relevant federal code (http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Legislation/Federal...) that covers medical devices. And I do absolutely agree that a smartphone app, when used to manage patient healthcare, patient ehrs, drug schedules, etc is a 'medical device' that should be regulated by the FDA.

The FDA isn't some archaic, out-of-date and ineffective regulatory agency. They do a good job and aren't shy about recalls, huge fines and enforcing compliance.