Pulmonary physiology is an important topic, and the diseases presented in the lung are critical for physicians of many subspecialties.
As any medical student can attest, learning pulmonary physiology means understanding the unique changes that the lungs go through in various situations.
3Dme PTY is an Australian creative studio whose interests in the human body are combined with creating a visual story. The premise of their apps is simple; to try and visually explain the importance of a topic, here it is V/Q mismatching on pulmonary physiology. But can their goal be accomplished on the iPad version?
The app presents itself to the developer’s simple focus. The home screen is clean and provides a brief “about” explanation, then jumps into the video. Besides the video, there is a quiz to help assess understanding.
The app presents a 6-minute video that goes through pulmonary physiology and simple examples in mismatching of ventilation and perfusion.
The other component of the app is the quiz. It is comprised of fourteen questions, which do a decent job of testing understanding. There is an ability to get a hint during the quiz (the hints are excerpts from the video, but use results in the loss of full-credit). At the end of the quiz, the app grades your responses, but does not let you review your misses or provide explanations.
Students in fields of medicine or nursing would best utilize the app, but the app would likely only be useful for a very limited time in the education spectrum.
The app, while visually detailed and stunning, presents a limited view on a simple topic, and could have been much improved. Simple inclusions such as disease states seen in pulmonary physiology, images/graphs, and an expanded quiz are things that we would look for in an improved app.
Price:
- Normally $2.99 (Feb 2012 promotion price: $0.99) from the AppStore
Likes:
- The video is indeed detailed and visually impressive
Dislikes:
- Very limited focus
- Lack of other pulmonary physiology topics
- Quiz does not provide explanation for misses and is a small sample of questions
Conclusion
- A unique approach to presenting topics, but it falls short in its educational value as it lacks many valuable attributes of a solid medical education app.
