By: Amit Patel, MD
Which Medical Reference Tool for the iPhone and iPad is the Best?
In this comprehensive review, iMedicalApps compares the free versions of the six of the best-known medical drug reference apps for the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad:
*Epocrates
*Lexi-Comp
*MedScape
*Micromedex
*Pepid
*Skyscape.
All of these apps excluding Epocrates and Pepid are also customized for the iPad format. This review concludes with our analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the various mobile medical reference applications — and how they can be utilized in the clinic setting.
Continue on for the Analysis:
Epocrates
Epocrates, which recently came in at #4 in our Top 20 free iPhone Medical Apps rankings is a useful medical resource for both the physician and trainee. Celebrated as the first legitimate medical application for the iPhone, we provided a full review of the Premium versions of the app (which runs between $99 and $199 yearly) in February. The basic free version of the app, however, is still useful in its own right. One of its strengths is its Pill ID feature, which facilitates identifying medications based on descriptions and pictures of the actual medication pills, a fairly unique highlight among the apps compared in this article.
Another strength is the app’s Medication InteractionCheck, which is useful for checking drug interactions, but somewhat more cumbersome to use and inclusive of less medications when compared to the Interaction Checker offered by MedScape and depicted below.
Downsides to the free version of the Epocrates app include MedMath (its medical calculator, which lacks in content compared to other free medical calculators we have reviewed, particularly MedCalc ( iMedicalApps review) and other functions that require the paid subscriptions (including Disease monographs with treatment options, Infectious Diseases, and an IV compatibility checker). In short, most of the free Epocrates’ functions may be outclassed by the apps below, but its Pill ID function is both unique and useful.
