Apps For Patients
Glaucoma Handbook hopes to eliminate non-compliance using a powerful tool: patient education
Glaucoma Handbook is an iPhone/iPad app whose production was directed by glaucoma specialist Dr. Jaewan Choi.
Dr. Choi wrote that he produced the app in order to dispel common myths and misconceptions about this insidious and dangerous eye disease which left untreated can lead to blindness.
From the first screen which tells us that Ray Charles lost his eyesight because of glaucoma, Dr. Choi aims the application at patients who live with the disease but do not always seem to understand it. As a young doctor, he said he sometimes used to privately wonder
Why don’t my patients understand my explanations ?
iPhone Medical App helps with patient communication – Xprompt Multilingual Assistance [App Review]
Every physician or clinical medical student has interacted with a patient who doesn’t speak their language. Frequently, interpreters need to be called for emergency department or inpatient encounters or outpatient clinic visits, and the delays can be frustrating and even hazardous to patient care.
Families of patients are often used by healthcare providers, but there are situations where using family members to translate may not represent an ideal choice – family doesn’t speak the provider’s language, no family present, delivering bad news to a patient, or emotionally difficult decisions.
Here we review the Xprompt multilingual assistance app from Blue Owl Software, a promising program that seeks to overcome the language barrier so often present in the healthcare setting.
Merck Manual Home Edition Aims to Help Patients Communicate More Efficiently With Physicians [App Review]
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.
3D Brain App is Free, Fun to Use, And Useful at the Same Time [App Review]
The App, 3D Brain, has been out since October, but it’s location under the “education” category of the App Store allowed it to slip under our radar. The 3D app is derived from the Genes to Cognition Online website, funded by the Dana Foundation and Hewlett Foundation. Using the native iPhone gestures, the app allows you to zoom and rotate images of the brain in a three dimensional fashion. In this post I’ll cover how this app can be used with your patients.
New Swine Flu App Released, Made by Harvard Medical School
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.
Healthcare App for your patients: Fish4Health
Fish4Health is a free application that provides fish information for pregnant and nursing women. This app is particularly useful for all the Obstetrics providers who get asked about fish consumption by their pregnant patients. Purdue University provides a lot of the information about this application (fish4health.net), so it has a solid academic backing.
The application itself has a solid build. The app has a list of all the major types of fish, tells you how much mercury is in the fish and how much you should eat per week. There is a fish consumption toolbar, where the best choices for fish consumption are listed, as well as the fish to avoid.
You can find a recently written article on this application here. This is a good application to recommend to your pregnant patients who love eating fish. Continue on to comment-
-iMedical Apps Team
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).
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.
