Simplee is an online service that helps patients with the management of their healthcare finances.
It has been called the “Mint.com for healthcare expenses.”
The service allows patients to track visits, monitor benefits, and track bills. Patients can access the service through a web browser, iPad app, or iPhone app.
This year, Simplee introduced a business-to-business service for hospitals that allows them to introduce digital billing among other features. The service is intended to allow hospitals to increase efficiency while providing new services. (read more)
Purpose of App Review
- evaluation of the robustness of the ASCCP app for pap smear result guidance
- assessment of the interface for the ASCCP app
Introduction
Just before I started residency, the pap smear guidelines changed.
In my second year, they changed again and now in my third year, the joint guidelines from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (ASCCP) have once again changed.
Even a recent editorial in the Green Journal acknowledges that mastering the guidelines for pap smear evaluation and followup is challenging. To this end, the ASCCP developed the ASCCP Mobile app that provides patient-specific guidelines for abnormal cervical cancer screening results.
(read more)
Purpose of App Review
- How well does this medical app serve as a mobile resource for medical students and residents learning basic medical procedures?
Introduction
All medical students and residents must learn several basic procedures.
These procedures range from drawing blood and inserting IVs to putting on sterile gloves and suturing wounds.
RealWorld Procedures is a mobile app for iOS created by Hyperexis that organizes videos created by the PocketSnips Procedural Skills Project. It contains educational videos and descriptions of 12 common medical procedures.
These introductory videos are aimed at medical students as well as the intern level. (read more)
Follow Iltifat Husain MD on twitter @iltifatMD
The following is our weekly list of notable iPhone & iPad medical apps released during the past week–week 14. For each app mentioned I have added my personal thoughts on the app.
The key thing to note is that these are not all of the medical apps released in the past week. Rather, these are the medical apps that stood out to me as having potential use for medical professionals. There are some great medical apps here and many are free.
Our previous weekly lists can be found at the following links: Week 14, Week 13, Week12, Week 11. (read more)
By: Pooja Jaeel
In a recent two-year long study, researchers have found tangible health benefits of the simple task of singing to your newborn child.
The study took place at the Beth Israel Medical Center and followed the outcomes of introducing musical intervention to 272 premature babies in the NICU.
The types of music ranged from two-toned percussion box, a cd of oceanic sounds, to a melodic lullaby, such as the conventional “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”. Each produced noticeable benefits of lowered heart rate, improved sleep, better sucking, and heightened moments of quiet alertness.
Often, the minutes of intentional music provided respite from the surrounding chaos of the NICU. As explained by music researcher at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Helen Shoemark, “Loud machinery, medical rounds coming through with 12 people, alarms on ventilators and pumps, the hiss of oxygen… Sound can be damaging. But meaningful noise is important for a baby’s brain development.” (read more)
Better is a healthcare concierge app with access to the knowledge and expertise of Mayo Clinic.
From anywhere in the world, you can use Better to tell you what problems could be causing your symptoms, connect you directly to a Mayo Clinic nurse or doctor, schedule appointments, research conditions using reputable sources and track your medical records.
In a demonstration, Better founder Geoff Clapp showed how the app could be used. Based on his symptoms, the app told him that celiac disease was a likely cause. He was then able to call a nurse at Mayo Clinic who did a short interview.
Although the nurse was unable to give him a diagnosis, she was able to explain a little about celiac disease, schedule a blood test, and give suggestions of local places to eat that serve gluten free food. The nurse knew that Clapp was travelling and scheduled the blood test for when he returned to California. (read more)
Purpose of App Review
To showcase a rare and informative app for students and professionals conducting any general lab work.
Introduction
Chemistry Lab Suite offers tools for individuals in the fields of peptide chemistry, mass spectrometry (both proteomics and metabolomics), and chemistry.
The interactive tools are grouped into four sections as follows:
- Solutions (solutions and buffers) - helps to determine recipes for dilutions and stock/working solutions
- Proteins (proteins, peptides, and amino acids) – look up structures and properties, calculate fragment masses and accession of protein information
- Peptide Synthesis – information on solid phase peptide synthesis, protocols, and reagent properties
- Chemicals (chemicals and elements) - allows calculation of molecular weight, use of chemical formulas, and a detailed list of the periodic table of the elements with relevant information
(read more)
While there has been plenty of data documenting the use of mobile devices and mobile apps available, assessing their use amongst the medical field is still few and far between.
This is especially the case when trying to determine what devices healthcare professionals are using and for what purposes (e.g. drug dosing, point-of-care, communication).
As such, research in this area is beneficial to recognize where utilization is taking place, and may be beneficial to developers to determine what products may be received well and what areas are open for development and not saturated with other applications. (read more)
Purpose of the App Review:
1) Does the app cover which dressings are best for certain wound sites and certain types of wounds?
2) Does the app suggest sizes and application instructions for certain dressings?
3) Is the app helpful for health professionals who are not well-versed in wound care management and dressings?
Introduction:
Wound care management has changed a lot, especially in the past 20 years. There is now such a wide variety of dressings–ones with silver, silicon, antibiotics and much more. Thus, each wound needs special consideration when choosing a dressing.
Wound Care is a simple app that is a wound care dressing guide. The app was produced so that people who manage wounds can quickly compare different dressings.
(read more)
Purpose of App Review
- to explore the wellness tracking features of the Kids’ Wellness Tracker app
- to assess the drug recommendations provided by the app
Introduction
Childhood is a busy time. It seems like you blink and your 2 year-old is now your 12 year-old getting ready to start middle school. As the time flies by, we try to document their every change as they become adults with photographs and keepsakes. Sometimes, though, we forget to document their health and sickness. The Kids Wellness Tracker app provides a means to document and monitor your child’s health and their illnesses.
(read more)
With an increasing proportion of our population on multiple chronic medications, it’s important to ask whether we are actually accomplishing the desired effect; this was a question posed by Steve Gullans to TEDMED’s audience in its final day as he suggested that we might be both underdosing and overdosing patients.
Along these lines was Isaac Kohane‘s talk on i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside), the National Center for Biomedical Computing. The work being done there serves to develop a scalable informatics framework to enable clinical researchers to use existing clinical data for research and, when combined with IRB-approved genomic data, facilitate the design of targeted therapies for individual patients with diseases having genetic origins. This technology is free and open source and could potentially allow us to have personalized treatments and make patient data count and work for that patient in addition to helping others.
As we work towards applying our existing tools more effectively, another speaker reminded us that there are still novel, out-of-the-box tools out there remaining to be discovered.
(read more)
The Wireless Health Conference, presented by the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance will be hosted at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD from November 1st – 3rd, 2013.
In its fourth year, this conference will feature research in wireless, connected, and mobile health. The aim of the conference is to promote high quality research and to build a larger community of investigators who can help push mobile health forward. Submissions of full papers, abstracts, and demonstrations are being sought in areas ranging from pilot studies for geriatric care to battery/energy technology that can support mobile health technology.
For more information, check out the Call for Submissions. The deadline is Friday, April 26th, 2013 so get writing!
The best medical apps released this past week v15
Follow Iltifat Husain MD on twitter @iltifatMD
The following is our weekly list of notable iPhone & iPad medical apps released during the past week–week 14. For each app mentioned I have added my personal thoughts on the app.
The key thing to note is that these are not all of the medical apps released in the past week. Rather, these are the medical apps that stood out to me as having potential use for medical professionals. There are some great medical apps here and many are free.
Our previous weekly lists can be found at the following links: Week 14, Week 13, Week12, Week 11. (read more)