App Review
Moving the doctor’s office on-line: milestones from the digital practice revolution [Emdat Mobile and PerfectServe Clinician]
While there seems to be a never ending stream of medical reference applications for smartphones, it might well be that medical apps for the more mundane parts of a doctor’s life that get the most use. Once outside the examination room, it seems we spend the bulk of our time charting and returning messages. Therefore, it is as much with relief as with pleasure that we welcome two iPhone applications that aim to facilitate medical transcription and handling phone calls: Emdat Mobile and PerfectServe Clinician.
Emdat Mobile
Emdat Mobile (iTunes link) is a simple application that allows dictation directly into the iPhone. It is not connected to a voice recognition engine such as Nuance’s Dragon but rather sends the recorded audio to a medical transcriptionist. Later, the transcribed record is available for viewing on the iPhone. While this may seem mundane, it is actually a very nice advance over using a digital dictaphone and special software to upload dictations.
It is likely that many readers have never heard of Emdat (“Electronic Medical Dictation And Transcription”). The company provides a web based platform for transcribed medical documents and was founded in 1999, early in the internet era . Emdat is not a transcription company but rather provides the infrastructure for independent medical transcription companies to store recorded audio as well as the finished documents. Clinicians and hospitals then use a simple web interface to edit and sign the documents.
While a lot of attention is given of late to computer voice recognition and transcription, many physicians still rely on voice dictation for documenting their patient encounters. The benefits are fairly plain, speaking is faster than typing or clicking and it does not require standing in front of a computer. Of course, many physicians who have converted to template based EHRs will say that, with time, they can document just as fast as with voice dictation. While this is likely correct, the catch is in the product. The dirty secret is that notes generated by clicking and choosing entries from templates are just barely usable as medical documents.
When you’re trying to read the notes of your colleague [in an electronic record], it’s almost impossible to figure out what happened to the patient. You have to read through two pages of all this junk that’s put in to increase billing.
Kaplan offering 100 free e-books through Apple Bookstore for limited time
Kaplan is offering 100 free e-books through iBooks, Apple’s e-reader for the iPad and the iPhone.
For those in the medical field, there are plenty of books to choose from. The e-books range from Kaplan USMLE step 1, 2, and 3, to novels about Intern life.
These books from Kaplan are usually $29.99 in other e-book formats. The deal is only valid in the Apple Bookstore, and lasts until August 30th.
Other categories of free e-books Kaplan is offering for a limited time include College (SAT prep), Graduate (GRE, MBA, MCAT), Law (PMBR), Nursing (CCRN), and Education (GRE, GMAT).
Although these e-books can be accessed on your iPhone, they are significantly easier to read on the iPad. Continue on to see how Kaplan’s USMLE step 3 Qbook looks on the iPad, including the annotating and highlighting functions.
Carb Counting with Lenny app helps educate pediatric diabetic population in an innovative fashion [App Review]
Medtronic, the world’s largest medical technology company, and maker of diabetic pumps and other devices for diabetics, has released an app called “Carb Counting with Lenny”, aimed at the pediatric diabetic population. One of the toughest things to teach children, usually type 1 diabetics, is how to carb count in order to better manage their diabetes.
Check that, one of the toughest things to teach diabetics in general, including adults, is how to carb count. For those afflicted with type 1 diabetes – the pediatric population, carb counting is essential.
The app has four different levels, and each level must be passed in order to reach the subsequent level, until you reach the “Build a Meal” level, where you can make a target carb goal and then drag and drop food items until your carb goal is met.
Residency Rater helps family medicine-bound medical students choose a residency
By: Darwin Wan, MS2
Fourth year is a tumultuous time for medical students. Although the toll of clerkships starts to grind down, students now find themselves faced with the difficult dilemma of choosing among dozens, sometimes hundreds of residency programs for further training.
For students heading to a Family Practice residency program, at least there is now an iPhone app that can help them make this difficult decision. Created by the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin Madison, Residency Rater [iTunes link] helps medical students organize their thoughts using a series of criteria and checklists with which they can score different family medicine programs.
By providing a neat and convenient way for users to score programs on multiple criteria, this free app stimulates graduating students to consider all aspects of the program before coming to a decision – an important consideration since the computerized residency match program does not allow students to change their minds once they have submitted their choices.
Dragon releases Medical Mobile Search – a voice dictation search tool free for a limited time
Nuance, the makers of the popular desktop dictation software, Dragon Medical Dictation, have just released their first mobile medical app – Dragon Medical Mobile Search. The app allows clinicians to search online medical content on their iPhone using their voice.
The app works in a carousel fashion, refer to the pictures included to understand what I mean. Once you use your voice to look up a disease pathology or a drug, you are presented with 5 different search results: Google, IMO (ICD-9 codes), Medline, Drugs.mobi, and Medscape.
We’ve been waiting on this app for some time now. At HIMSS 2010, Nuance gave iMedicalApps a sneak peak of this application in action. The video clip of the preview is attached at the end of this post.
Also in the preview demo is the most eagerly anticipated product of theirs: Dragon Medical Mobile Recorder – their extremely popular desktop dictation software in the palm of your hand. But back to their just released Medical Mobile Search app.
The most important question regarding this app: How well does it recognize the disease or drug you verbalize?
VisualDx Mobile for the iPad is now in the app store [iPad App Review]
One of the better examples of a mobile medical app that provides useful point-of-care information is VisualDx Mobile. This iPhone application (iTunes link) is powered by a rich database of high quality, carefully tagged images of dermatological conditions that can be efficiently searched by one or multiple keywords.
To learn more about the app, check out our iMedicalApps review here . To get a glimpse of the design philosophy behind VisualDx, check out our interview with the CMIO of Logical Images, Art Papier, MD.
The quality of the images and reliance on visual to make a diagnosis made the iPhone app a natural fit for the iPad. In fact, we had predicted the potential shortly after the iPad was announced and had counted VisualDx as on of the Top 5 iPad medical apps that we were eagerly awaiting.
Hematology Miniatlas encourages patient education [iPhone App Review]
Here we review the Hematology Miniatlas App, one of the Miniatlas Series of Apps designed by EC-Europe to foster physician-patient communication.
EC-Europe prides itself as a “premier provider of doctor-patient communication products for the human health market.” EC-Europe has traditionally focused on helping a long list of leading pharmaceutical companies with their marketing strategies, specifically crafting brochures, posters, and interactive software, especially for patients, on behalf of these companies.
However, EC-Europe’s recent foray into the mobile medical world appears to be free of pharmaceutical involvement and centers on the Miniatlas Series of Apps, whose first apps just went live on July 28th. This Series strives to provide physicians with a convenient way to discuss medical topics or illnesses with patients in an illustration-centered manner.
How the Documents To Go app can be used in medicine [iPhone]
By: Darwin Wan, B.Sc, MS2
Business users have long enjoyed the company of their Microsoft Office documents at all times in the form of the preloaded Documents To Go software on their Blackberries. Now, this venerable application looks to be acquainted with medical students.
While it’s not strictly a medical application, the universal (iPhone/iPad compatible) Documents To Go app ($9.99) gives mobile devices a very fundamental ability: the ability to view, edit and create Word and Excel files, the ability to view PDF, Powerpoint, and iWork files and the ability to sync the device with folders on a computer. The premium edition ($14.99) also includes Powerpoint editing, Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, iDisk & SugarSync support.
Medicine Recall app is med student’s best friend when getting pimped on the hospital wards [Android Review]
By: Jason Paluzzi, MS3
The Recall series of texts has gotten a reputation around my medical school as the answer to 3rd year “pimp questions.”
For those who are unaware, these questions are the short, fast, medical trivia type question that attendings ask their students, and are often unanswerable without having encountered that particular piece of trivia.
With the already high-pressure environment of medical school, many students dread these question and answer sessions, while other students enjoy them as a chance to learn new factoids. Either way, there’s nothing more gratifying than nailing a pimp question on rounds or in the OR.
The most famous book in the Recall series is Surgical Recall. However, I don’t start my surgery clerkship until January, so in this review we’ll take a look at Medicine Recall. My goal was to see if I could quickly consult this app after writing my notes in the morning to be prepared for anything that came my way on rounds.
