Comments on: Top 10 Free iPhone Medical Apps for Health care Professionals

By: drobertjordan, M.D.

drobertjordan, M.D. — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:21:15 +0000

That sounds crazy awesome good, I cannot wait to try it out, thanks for the extensive post.

By: Arthur Williams, MD

Arthur Williams, MD — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 10:10:53 +0000

Our practice is using Concentrica for secure clinical communication.
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My partner and I head two hospitalists groups in the Boston area, one acute care, the other a rehab hospital. For years our handoff communications went through paper mail or fax. We were very diligent about communication. Even so, specialist from acute care settings and primary care physicians in the community complained that our group was like a black box – that they were not getting good communication about the care we were providing. The hospital even setup a physician portal so that any on-staff doctor could log in remotely and access their patient’s information. But this “pull” model never caught on, as most doctors expect data to be “pushed” out to them.

One of our new physicians suggested we look at Concentrica, which is an online network for secure clinical communication. This is free to physicians to communicate with each other. The national directory of physicians meant that we could quickly send to any physician, without having to know their fax or email. Like an online email system, recipients can reply and forward messages, so now we could get immediate feedback from colleagues in other locations, and in important cases, have a real dialog about patient care. The “Group Discussions” feature allows the specialist in town, the hospitalist, and the PCP to all join in an online dialog about one patient.

The application works well on our smartphones.

When our group wanted to send documents on our behalf, we upgraded to the subscription version, which cost less than paying someone in our office to fax the documents. There is an audit trail so we can see who received their messages. One feature we really liked was that if the message was not accessed online it was faxed, so we knew our clinical work was getting there.

For our group it made it easy to communicate with other physicians, to get our documents out, gave a way for others to respond, and was cost effective.

Arthur Williams, MD

By: Iltifat Husain

Iltifat Husain — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:45:41 +0000

They usually update it pretty frequently. I’m surprised to hear the issues you’re having though? Their customer service is pretty responsive though – so I would encourage you to message them directly

By: Iltifat Husain

Iltifat Husain — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:44:38 +0000

Depends Rusubena – do you have a lot of reference apps you’ll be purchasing? If you need anatomy apps, or multiple reference apps and textbooks, you could consider the 32 gb. But if you mainly just need Epocrates, and a few small reference apps, then you should be fine with the 8gb

By: Iltifat Husain

Iltifat Husain — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:43:20 +0000

Good point Alexander – At the time of this post there was some disagreement amongst the team about adding Skyscape. Some of us are fans, while some are not. The overall consensus was that Epocrates and Medscape offer better free content, and that adding Skyscape would just be replicating the type of content these apps offer – and taking another spot in the top 10 list. That said, Skyscape has made some significant upgrades, and the fact that it’s formatted for the iPad as well will most likely make it in our next top 0 list.

By: Thejevon

Thejevon — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:22:47 +0000

I was going to Download Epocrates, but the reviews of the current version on itunes all seem to be horrible, siting failure to open, difficulty logging in and continuous update requests/demands. If I already have Medscape, is it still worth getting Epocrates? How quickly do they tend to update the app to improve the problems?

By: RianJepson

RianJepson — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:58:39 +0000

It’s just amazing how the iPhone can be used in health care as well. Is there any field that the iPhone hasn’t found a good app?

By: Hannah

Hannah — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:33:41 +0000

So far the 3 major teaching hospitals in Montreal which I have been to don’t have Wifi, maybe some of the others with more money might have, will see. Some applications like Merck Manual claim to be free on iStore but then you need to register and it’s complicated once you try and use the app. Epocrates does seem to work offline, hopefully the others reviewed here do too. Thanks! Hannah

By: Iltifat Husain

Iltifat Husain — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:40:28 +0000

you should try all of these out since they are free. almost all can run
offline. i’m surprised to hear hospitals in Quebec don’t have wifi. is that
true for even the bigger hospitals?

By: Hannah

Hannah — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:57:53 +0000

Hospitals in Quebec don’t have wifi to run apps on my iPod touch, so wondering which apps have offline functionality? Thanks!

By: Rusubena

Rusubena — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:04:33 +0000

I’m looking to buy an Ipod Touch for med apps mainly as my old Palm can no longer access Epocrates. Do you recommend buying the 8GB or more expensive 32 GB one?

By: Alexander David092

Alexander David092 — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:34:12 +0000

Hi!!! I am surprised that Skyscape is not featured in this list. I have been using the skyscape med apps on my iphone and over the time they have proved very useful and resourceful.

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 21:10:54 +0000

Thanks for the post.

Just wanted to let you know that Radiopaedia has a total of 6 volumes currently available, each with a free version.

http://radiopaedia.org/article...

We are also working on bringing each one in HD to the iPad http://radiopaedia.org/article... and Android platform.

Cheers, Frank

Frank Gaillard
Radiopaedia.org Editor

By: Simon22

Simon22 — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:30:02 +0000

Can you recommend good apps for ophthalmologists?