Skyscape
Skyscape, which came in at #7 in our Top 20 free Iphone Medical App rankings, offers many powerful paid clinical resources, many of which we have reviewed on our site, including the Wash U Manual, Harrison’s Manual of Medicine, 5-Minute Clinical Consult, the Merck Manual, Journal Watch, and Pocket Medicine.
For free, however, Skyscape offers Outlines in Clinical Medicine (OCM), RxDrugs, and Archimedes. OCM provides disease monographs similar to MedScape and with ~800 entries but an uninspired and cumbersome user interface, RxDrugs represents a solid medication reference, but, once again, the user interface requires too many clicks and is found lacking compared to the medication references of MedScape or Micromedex.
Archimedes 360 is a solid medical calculator, but we find MedCalc equally comprehensive and easier to use. In short, we find the free applications provided by Skyscape inferior to their counterparts in other applications, in no small part because of the Skyscape user interface.
Summary
In summary, these different applications have varying areas of strengths. For medication referencing and drug interaction checking, MedScape is the go-to app. Alternatively, the Micromedex medication reference is a powerful resource (especially for its mechanism of action and clinical teaching sections), but lacks a strong drug interaction checker. While the Epocrates medication reference and interaction checker are inferior to those of MedScape, its Pill ID function is unique and can be helpful for those situations where patients cannot recall which medication or what dosage they are on. For medical calculator functionality, we actually recommend MedCalc (full review here LINK) over Skyscape’s Archimedes 360 and especially Epocrates’ MedMath). Lexi-Drugs and Lexi-Interact from Lexi-Comp, like Pepid’s medication reference and drug interactions generator, are no better than their MedScape counterparts and cost hundreds of dollars.
Conclusion
For the following uses, here are our recommended apps:
- Medication Reference: MedScape or Micromedex (better for trainees)
- Pill ID: Epocrates
- Drug Interaction Checker: MedScape (superior to Epocrates)
- Disease Monographs: among the free applications, MedScape (superior to Skyscape’s OCM)
- Medical Calculator: MedCalc (superior to Skyscape’s Archimedes 360 and Epocrates’ MedMath)
