Review of AAEM’s board review flashcard app for Emergency Physicians

The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) is a great medical association. I’m a huge fan of their work and what they do for the Emergency Medicine community as a whole.

The AAEM Young Physicians Section (YPS) just released a flash cards app called EM Flash Facts. If you’re a member of YPS you can request a free copy of the app, if not, the app will cost you $9.99. The EM Flash Facts app is designed to help you study for the boards, and has over 1,000 questions.  We have reviewed other Emergency Medicine Board review apps in the past.

The AAEM medical app is disappointing on a number of fronts: Price, User Interface, and lack of polish.

The User Interface leaves much to be desired. You can bookmark questions, but you don’t know which questions you have reviewed and answered — and with over 1,000 questions, having the ability to know what you’ve already been through would be tremendously useful. Even bookmarking is not intuitive, you have to click an icon that looks like you’re leaving a note.

The fonts used are odd, and don’t look professional. Keeping a simple font would have made reading the questions much easier, and given the app a significantly better polish.

For members the medical app is free, but for non-members the app is $9.99.  The EM Flash Facts medical app is not polished enough for $9.99. AAEM should look at another professional specialty — Emergency Medicine Resident’s Association to see how they have made their mobile apps. We’re huge fans of EMRA’s PressorDex, a medical app that is tremendously useful for critical care scenarios. EMRA has six other great apps available in the App Store as well.

We also have a list of the best Emergency Medicine apps that is worth checking out.