by: Michelle Kraft
The leading oncology channel, ecancer, provides information, communication and education to the medical professional cancer community.
It is supported by the European Cancer Organization and is an independent, non-profit aimed at the rapid dissemination of cancer information.
This popular oncology channel has introduced a free app for the iPhone to help bring cancer information into the hands of doctors.
The app contains many of the same categories as the main site; videos, news, articles, events, and Twitter.
At the very top of the app is a side scrollable image of the editor’s choice of video selections from ecancer. While the image on the full website automatically changes, people using the app will need to scroll through the images themselves. App users can select the videos tab to access more videos which range in topic from imaging and devices to specific cancers like breast and lung. The website offers the ability to search for videos by subject, date, conference, etc. Unfortunately there is no way to search for a specific video using the app. The app just lists what appears to be about a weeks worth of videos.
The same structure is true for the news, journal and events sections. The full website allows individuals to search by date for news and journals and by subject and author for journal articles.
However, the app does not have this feature. The app just lists approximately ten of the most recent journal articles and twenty of the most recent news items.
Sharing articles, videos and other information from the ecancer app is very easy, tapping on the share button at the top of each item gives individuals the option to share via email, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. One major disappointment was the fact that the inbuilt Twitter client didn’t seem to load any tweets whilst the actual Twitter page showed that @ecancer was quite active.
Screen shot of Twitter section of app:
Screen shot of ecancer Twitter channel showing recent tweets:
Price:
- Free
Likes:
- Easy ability to share items through multiple platforms
- Ability to download the PDF of each article
- Editor’s choice videos highlighted at the top
Dislikes:
- No search capabilities to find information, must scroll to find things
- Not all of the news, video, or journal articles are available using the app
- Sign up button is confusing and doesn’t go away
- No radio/audio files which are on the full site but not on the app
- Twitter section is completely blank, no tweets
Conclusion:
- Unfortunately due to the blank Twitter section and the lack of basic search abilities to find information it just feels as if this app is still in development
- It is also confusing as to why the developers included videos but did not include the audio from the radio files that are available on the full website
- The iPhone is often used as an iPod allowing people to listen to programs as they would music and the radio files would seem to have been a natural fit for the app
- The app is free. So doctors who want to keep abreast of the most recent events in cancer might find it useful, but due to the lack of search features and limited content it might prove to be more frustrating for anyone who enjoys the information available on the full website
