The term “Gray’s Anatomy” has become synonymous with the popular ABC show featuring surgeons who have ridiculous amounts of drama while somehow still finding time for the OR.  I’ve only seen one episode of the show, and would describe the main character as a black hole for drama, but anyways, before the show, “Gray’s Anatomy” was synonymous with gross anatomy, a very familiar text with medical students.  The full version of the Gray’s Anatomy text has now gone mobile and is ready to use on your iPhone.  There are a few versions of this app out, but I’ll be reviewing the Deluxe version.  In this review I’ll focus on how useful it might be for gross anatomy during the first year of medical school.

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Unlike many applications in the medical section of the App Store, Merck Manual is not made for medical professionals.  Instead, the app is aimed at lay people with no healthcare experience.  The app hopes to help these people understand medical knowledge easier.  We were definitely fans of the Professional Edition, which we recently reviewed.  The Professional Edition does a great job with synthesizing the information medical professionals need the most, and basically putting a medical encyclopedia in your hand.  I liken the Professional Edition to a Medical Wikipedia, at least in terms of the pertinent content it contains and the feel.  The user interface, navigation, and content are beautifully laid out in the Professional Edition, I was hoping to find the same features in the Home Edition as I was preparing for this review.

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The developer of the Clinical Orthopedic Exam App has been gracious enough to give us promotional codes for the readers of our site. The App costs $39.99 regularly. We did a review of this app a few months ago that you should check out if you haven’t already.  Read more to access the the promo codes.

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There are few moments in medicine where your immediate actions lead to a direct, life altering result for your patient. Obstructed airways and anaphylactic reactions come to mind, but neither of those occur as often as a code (“code blue”, and I’m not talking about when the cold activated indicator on your beer lets you know it’s ready to drink).

Back in medical school, before we entered the wards 3^rd year, our school made sure we were ACLS certified. I realized how lucky I was that my school taught such a rigorous ACLS course when I was doing an away rotation at another medical school and students were complaining about their lack of ACLS training. Enter the “ACLS Advisor – Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support” App (currently $5.99 in the App Store) from Current Clinical Strategies Publishing.  This review will cover how this well organized and easy to use application walks you though various ACLS algorithms and then some.

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Recently, a post on the popular medical blog site KevinMD garnered a fair amount of attention with the provocative title “Why doctors should choose Google Android over the iPhone for medical apps”. It was posted on Oct 20, 2009 and was subsequently listed as one of the most popular posts for October on the highly trafficked KevinMD site.

In his post, the author seems to have gone out of his way to make a series of increasingly hyperbolic arguments declaring Motorola Droid superior to the iPhone. The long trail of negative comments on the site demonstrate that perhaps not all readers were swayed by his arguments. This post is an attempt to clarify or rebut some of the points made in that post. I will not address every issue, as there are too many. I will try to maintain a tone of neutrality, at least until towards the end.

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