Archive for July, 2009
The Best and Most Useful Medical Apps for the iPhone or iPod Touch
We’ve been reviewing medical apps and providing news for a few weeks now and thought it would be a good idea to list some of our favorite apps. As you can see from our title, we’re pretty excited about this post. These are the top medical apps we find useful for the hospital setting and medical school. We’ve reviewed some of these apps on this website, but not all. Eventually we’ll have a list of top medical apps for practicing clinicians and students, using our own backgrounds in each. In this post we’ll rank the 7 most useful medical apps.
iEmergency App Provides ICE Information in Unique Ways [App Review]
iEmergency, by Kavapoint LLC is an “In Case of Emergency” program for the iPhone and iPod Touch devices and costs $0.99 for the full version, and is available in a “Lite” version for free. We’ll be reviewing the full version in this post (hoping that in case of an emergency, we opted to spend the dollar).
WebMD launches Medscape App [App Review]
WebMD has launched a new app directed towards health care providers. Medscape is a free app and was launched a few days ago. I like this app because of it’s speed. It’s great for looking up med dosages (adult vs. peds, etc), interactions, and pricing. If you’d rather not wait a few extra seconds for Epocrates to load in order to look up a simple drug dosage, then you should try this app. I found the user interface to be nice and quick.
Medscape has a CME section and a medical news section, which I didn’t find as useful. There is also a section where you can look up nearby hospitals, physicians, and pharmacies. The only downside I could find for this app is they ask for you name, email address, etc before you can use it. I fudged most of that information though and it took me just a few minutes to set up. Medscape has a nice interactive website set up here.
iMurmur App Helps You Learn Heart Sounds Via Your iPhone [App Review]
We haven’t started any of the other app reviews by saying this, but you might as well download this app right now. Recently I mentioned to a friend how I couldn’t believe there wasn’t an app for heart murmurs. Now there is. This review will discuss the features of the medical app, iMurmur.
CallMD and A.D.A.M. are teaming up to diagnose you, good idea?
Well it looks like CallMD, the website that offers online and phone medical advice from doctors and nurses is teaming up with A.D.A.M. (company that provides medical technologies). A.D.A.M. already has an app out (pictured), called Medzio Health Manager. The app allows you to search for medical topics based on your symptoms and it lets you search for local clinics/hospitals. It doesn’t appear to be affiliated with any clinics, and when you do search, it uses google maps to search basic key words. Needless to say, its a pretty basic app. Thats where CallMD comes in. My assumption is they are going to use a Medzio type free app to help you organize your “symptoms” and then link you to the CallMD team for a fee.
The American Heart Association offering Fist Aid/CPR app
The American Heart association is offering a First Aid / CPR app, titled "Pocket First Aid & CPR". There have a number of CPR and First Aid apps already in the app store, but this is the first one that has the backing from the people who actually set the standard (AHA).
Some of the more notable features about this app are the illustrations, videos, and ability to store important medical information (insurance information, doctors information). The videos include the guy we have all grown to love from ACLS training (ha). The app also has information from a broad variety of medical topics that might require acute care, such as choking, bites, burns, and more.
The nice thing about this app is you don’t need cell phone reception to use this. It’s a stand alone app, which means you need to have wi-fi to download it since its a pretty big size (68 mb because of videos). The fact that you can easily update this app is nice, and will help you stay on top of standard of care.
I’m a bit surprised by the price, $3.99. I know the AHA paid Jive Media to make the app, but it would have been nice if the price was lower and I think more people would be inclined to buy it.
Now only if the American Heart Association (AHA) could come out with an app for ACLS training. It would be easier to learn from that and keep your memory fresh, instead of having to carry the cards around in the white coat.
You can find information about the app here. If you want to check out the app in the App store here is the link. There is a video of the app in action that I found here.
Medical College of Georgia to offer custom Medical iPhone applications
The Medical College of Georgia is going to be offering its students custom built apps. They’re offering twelve apps right now, 6 of them for more "general use", and the other 6 with a more medical focus.
Speed Bones MD App Review (v.1.2)
Speed Bones MD (v.1.2) is an app that helps you practice and memorize skeletal anatomy. It’s very similar to to Speed Muscles MD (v1.1), except with a skeletal focus. You can check out the Speed Muscles MD review by scrolling below or clicking here (The reviews are similar). This app allows you to rapidly review skeletal structures in an entertaining fashion. You can use it to practice or you can use it to compete with friends in game mode. This is the full version, which costs 99 cents, as compared to the free Speed Bones Lite app. I’ll detail the difference in the full and lite versions later in this review.
