One of the biggest surprises in the App Store is the lack of legitimate USMLE study resources. I thought one of the biggest markets in would be medical education. There are a good number of Q-banks available for USMLE studying, but most can’t be accessed on the iPhone. Can you imagine if Kaplan or USMLE World had an app with their Q-banks? I would think this wouldn’t be hard to implement, and I know many people who would jump at the chance to have their personal Q-banks mobile.

Right now the four main players in the App Store are First Aid Q&A series, Lange Q bank, Dr. Conrad’s Disease Deck, and USMLE Wiz Flash Cards. We’ve reviewed the Lange Q bank(step 2 version) and Dr. Conrad’s Disease Deck. These apps will cost you 33 dollars and 20 dollars, respectively. But now you have the USMLE Buzz App crashing this sparse party. The app usually costs $2.99, but is currently on sale for 99 cents. It’s significantly cheaper than the other Q-banks and offers a different type of question answer format.  This review will cover the features of USMLE Buzz along with the best way to use it for USMLE step studying.

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Its 3 AM and you are the new intern on call covering far more than your share of patients for multiple services. Your pager goes off. Mrs. Smith is seizing and Mr. Jones is vomiting large amounts of blood and is hypokalemic. What do you do?

MD on Call ($5.99) hopes to provide these answers. The app is developed by MDMarkee Publishing and is a new addition to the App Store. It is a simple application with sometimes basic but vital information, especially useful at those early morning call hours.  This review will focus on the information provided and my experience using this application while being on call.

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There has been a flurry of H1N1 applications, and they are all a bit hard to differentiate. There is a notable app that was recently released. The app, HMSMobile Swine Flu Center, was developed by Harvard Medical School and costs $1.99. This is the first Swine Flu App in the App Store with a big-time medical name behind it. The app itself has built in videos explaining H1N1 and other related topics. It also has the "outbreaks near me" feature that most of the swine flu applications have. Of note, the app has a "business add on" feature, that provides advice to businesses on how to prepare for outbreaks in the workplace.

There is a nice video of the application on the Harvard website that can be found here:

The iTunes link to the application can be found here.

This past week Reuters reported on how Zargis Medical(auscultation software) was cleared as a developer for iPhone apps and more importantly, peripherals for the iPhone.

The following is a quote from Zargis Medical in the article:

The future of healthcare delivery is about connectivity and mobility. Zargis’ expertise in computer-aided auscultation and our advanced medical software platform positions us perfectly to create diagnostic software and peripherals that are a natural fit for smartphones. We intend to improve healthcare efficiency by helping clinicians bring medical technology to the patient, rather than the other way around,” stated Zargis CEO John Kallassy.

If you delve deeper into Zargis Medical, you see how they are heavily vested in diagnostic cardiology software. They have created the worlds first FDA-cleared medial software to identify and classify suspected systolic and diastolic heart murmurs. Of particular interest is how they have integrated their software with the Littmann Bluetooth Electronic Stethoscope Model 3200. In their setup, the stethoscope communicates via bluetooth to a laptop with the Zargis auscultation software.

Continue on for the rest of the story.

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Get yourself a copy of Pocket Heart (iTunes price is $5.99) and you’ll immediately be impressed by this app. Yes, the graphics and animations will be what first grabs your attention, but you’ll soon find out in this review that Pocket Heart is truly a good learning tool for cardiac anatomy and physiology.

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