Editors note: When this article was written by our physician writer, it was free — that no longer is the case as the developer has changed the pricing.
Purpose of App Review
How helpful is this app in preparing Emergency Medicine physicians for inservice and board exams?
Introduction
In February, all Emergency Medicine residents in the U.S. took their annual inservice exam, a yearly test that aims to prepare residents for their formal board exams at the end of residency training.
Residents must find time in their busy clinical schedules to study for exams, using a combination of textbooks and board review questions. Many resources exist for this purpose. I recently reviewed two board review apps: Practice Exams in EM and EM IQ.
EM Board review is another free app for iOS and Android that contains a bank of 5000 multiple choice questions aimed to prepare residents for inservice and board exams.
(read more)
Purpose of App Review
To review the utility, ease of use, and information provided by the Electronic Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring app.
Introduction
Walk onto any obstetric ward in the United States and you will see monitors full of fetal heart tracings. To the untrained eye, they are just parallel lines.
To the trained eye, they give a second-to-second update on the fetal heart rate.
To become trained, you need to learn how to interpret the pictures. The Electronic Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring app acts a quick reference guide, complete with actual fetal heart tracing images, to support the learning and interpretation of “strips.”
(read more)
While vaccinations have been used to help prevent multiple diseases, there has been a recent surge amongst patients in developed countries to refuse their administration.
While the reasons are multifactorial, the fact remains that there is still research to be conducted to understand precise reasons for refusal.
As such, recent research presented at the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance (February 2013) by Murphy and colleagues from the University of Iowa, demonstrated the construction of a mobile app for this purpose.
(read more)
Purpose of the App Review:
1) What types of questions does the app ask?
2) Are there any additional questions I can do on the app?
3) What type of feedback does the app provide after I have answered a question?
Introduction:
On an ICU month, residents and students know they probably won’t be getting very much studying done.
However, during downtime at the ICU, it’s nice to be able to quickly access a question bank so you can learn on the go in small, manageable pieces in your otherwise hectic day.
PICU Question of the Day is an app that helps the busy residents, attendings and medical students continue to learn about pediatric intensive care on an iPhone or iPad.
(read more)
Purpose of the App Review:
1) Does this app include chemotherapy dosing and indications?
2) Does the app include news about cancer treatments?
3) What other tools does the app include?
Introduction:
Chemotherapy and management of malignancy has been a focus of modern science in the past few decades.
For that reason, there are now many treatment options for the various cancers that exist.
There are many new, experimental treatments and a lot of scholarly activity associated with medical oncology and keeping track of it can be very difficult.
Chemotherapy Advisor is an app that lives and breathes all things chemotherapy. From a homepage that looks like a Facebook newsfeed to medical calculators, this app is a robust tool for providers who deal with chemotherapeutic agents regularly.
The app was developed by chemotherapyadvisor.com, a well known chemotherapy reference tool frequented by medical oncologists.
(read more)
App Reviewed: Omnio (Ver. 1.3.2)
Goals of Review:
- To determine how similar Omnio is to Skyscape’s current mobile app
- Ascertain usability of Omnio for daily practice as a mobile reference source
Introduction:
To many healthcare professionals, Skyscape offers a great package of free and premium mobile based tools in one app. These features range from drug information, medical calculators, news sources, and content from 50+ medical publishers.
However, one drawback to their app is that while it serves as a great portal to other content, it never really took advantage of the iPad’s features or felt like a personalized app for my utilization. Skyscape has now come out with Omnio, which was their answer to creating a new way to experience the various resources they offer.
(read more)
Purpose of App Review
- To assess an open access, current awareness app for on-the-go access to scholarly articles.
Introduction
The PLoS ONE app for Android acts as a quick access point to recently published articles within an area of interest.
Users can view a general list of recently added PLoS articles or refine the list of references by looking within designated topics. There are more than two dozen content areas that users can focus on (listed later), making it an app that should be of interest to clinicians from any background.
(read more)
One large gripe in the hospital setting is the speed of medication verification by pharmacists prior to dispensing to the floor.
Often, one large barrier is the volume of orders that pour into the pharmacy after a medical team finishes their rounds.
Inevitably, questions arise and phone calls are made to prescribers to confirm some variable that may delay verification of a medication that others are awaiting to give.
As such, some hospitals place pharmacists on the floors to partner with a team to gain further insight into orders and reduce this communication lag.
However, with the rise of mobile technology, can a mobile device reduce the time of pharmacy verification over standard stationary computer terminals? For me, this is a great question. During my residency, I heavily used my iPad during rounds to answer questions and help with order entry on the go, especially with STAT medications, but I never considered if this helped increase my workflow.
(read more)
Purpose of App Review
- To assess the app’s claim that it allows you to check the baby’s heart rate pattern
- To evaluate the baby heart monitor portion of the app
- To evaluate the package of calculators purchased with the app
Introduction
There is something magical about a baby’s heartbeat; I never get tired of listening to it.
I love watching my patients’ faces light up in excitement or ease in relief at the sound of the fetal heart beat. On a labor and delivery floor we, as practitioners, watch them incessantly.
Can an app allow you to listen or watch a baby’s heart rate in the comfort of your home? The Baby Heart Rate Monitor and Pregnancy Calculators app, at first look of the title, seems to indicate that this is possible.
So is this a patient-centered app? No. Proving that the devil is in the details with this app’s description, the app does not claim and does not provide this ability.
Instead, the Baby Heart Rate Monitor and Pregnancy Calculators app , version 2013.2, aims to provide a fetal heart rate interpretation scheme according to a “newly” proposed 5-tier system. The app also provides other pregnancy-related calculators.
Of note, while in the process of publishing this review, versions 2013.3 (3/7/13) and 2013.4 (3/11/13) have been released that do allow for listening and recording of the fetal heart rate (read more)
Our metabolism is at the center of our health and well-being, though it goes largely under-appreciated in the grand scheme of things in favor of an emphasis on exercise as the primary calorie burner. For most individuals, 70-80 percent of the calories we burn come from metabolism, not exercise. However, each of us has a unique metabolic rate due to the subtle variations in our relative activity levels, diet, and physiological characteristics.
Breezing, a startup spun out of Arizona State University, has developed a hand-held metabolism tracker which connects to a users smartphone or tablet. The device, also called Breezing, uses indirect calorimetry to measure your resting energy expenditure, your energy source (fat or carbohydrates), and allows you to track these parameters over time.
(read more)
By Jeremy Webb MD
In the last several years, there has been a big push to deliver easily accessible, clinically pertinent information to interns, residents, and graduates of Emergency Medicine (EM) programs around the world.
It is not unique to EM.
After spending the last 3 years of my residency scouring the net for supplemental educational resources, I’ve learned our specialty takes top prize when it comes to both the quality and sheer quantity of social media and web-based learning sites. We live in amazing times. (read more)
Follow Iltifat Husain MD on twitter @iltifatMD
The following is our weekly list of the notable iPhone medical apps released during the past week, week 12. For each app I have added some comments and alternative apps you might consider.
The key thing to note is 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. (read more)
Tracking vaccination refusal through a medical app
While vaccinations have been used to help prevent multiple diseases, there has been a recent surge amongst patients in developed countries to refuse their administration.
While the reasons are multifactorial, the fact remains that there is still research to be conducted to understand precise reasons for refusal.
As such, recent research presented at the International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance (February 2013) by Murphy and colleagues from the University of Iowa, demonstrated the construction of a mobile app for this purpose.
(read more)