Top 10 Free iPhone Medical Apps for Health care Professionals - IIMS
Top 10 Free iPhone Medical Apps for Health care Professionals - IIMS
Top 10 Free iPhone Medical Apps for Health care Professionals - IIMS
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<strong>Top</strong> <strong>10</strong> <strong>Free</strong> <strong>iPhone</strong> <strong>Medical</strong> <strong>Apps</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Health</strong> <strong>care</strong> <strong>Professionals</strong><br />
by i<strong>Medical</strong><strong>Apps</strong> Team<br />
If you’re a physician, medical student, or in any other health <strong>care</strong> related field, trying to find the best free medical apps<br />
<strong>for</strong> the <strong>iPhone</strong> is a hassle. <strong>Apps</strong> such as “Dream Meanings”, “Relax Ocean waves”, and “Stool Scanner Lite” dominate<br />
the <strong>Top</strong> <strong>Free</strong> <strong>Medical</strong> <strong>Apps</strong> list in the App Store.<br />
Our top <strong>10</strong> <strong>iPhone</strong> medical apps list contains no such app, and this isn’t a re‐hash of the top downloaded free medical<br />
apps either. Rather, this list contains the top <strong>10</strong> free <strong>iPhone</strong> medical apps health <strong>care</strong> professionals and students can<br />
actually use on a day to day basis.<br />
1) Medscape<br />
We mentioned this app when it was released in the summer of<br />
2009. At the time I doubt many thought it would ever eclipse<br />
Epocrates in the top free medical apps section of the App Store, but<br />
with significant recent updates it’s accomplished this feat.<br />
This app always had a great drug reference section, with over 6,000<br />
generic, brand, and OTC drugs, along with a drug interaction<br />
checker. But with recent updates, Medscape now has a Diseases and<br />
Conditions section, along with a Clinical Procedures section. These<br />
added sections aren’t just fluff, they actually contain concise and<br />
useful in<strong>for</strong>mation, with videos and pictures to boot. We plan on<br />
doing a full review in the near future. Cost: <strong>Free</strong><br />
2) Epocrates<br />
The free version of Medscape might be ranked higher on our list, and<br />
in the App Store, but I guarantee almost every medical professional<br />
still has at least the free version of Epocrates. My peers and I often<br />
joke about how Epocrates is the “most trusted name in Medicine” –<br />
because it’s the one app med schools and medical institutions aren’t<br />
afraid of pushing. We recently did a full review of Epocrates.<br />
The free version, called Epocrates Rx, includes: Drug interactions, Pill<br />
Identifier, Drug Info, and <strong>Medical</strong> Calculator. Surprisingly, Medscape<br />
doesn’t have a medical calculator, you would think this added<br />
functionality would be easy to do. In our review of Epocrates, we go<br />
over all the different versions in details, along with pricing – we were<br />
definitely impressed. Cost: <strong>Free</strong><br />
3) iRadiology<br />
This app is a must download if you’re a resident or a medical student. Even if you’re not in that<br />
category, you might want to download this app just <strong>for</strong> fun. iRadiology has a catalog of over<br />
500 radiology cases designed to help medical students<br />
and residents improve their plain film, CT, and MRI<br />
reading skills. We did a full review of this app recently.<br />
The cases are derived from Dr. Gillian Lieberman, who is<br />
currently the Director of Harvard <strong>Medical</strong> Student training<br />
and Associate Director of the Residency Program at Beth<br />
Israel <strong>Medical</strong> Center. We interviewed her when<br />
iRadiology was released – and she provided some great
<strong>Top</strong> <strong>10</strong> <strong>Free</strong> <strong>iPhone</strong> <strong>Medical</strong> <strong>Apps</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Health</strong> <strong>care</strong> <strong>Professionals</strong><br />
by i<strong>Medical</strong><strong>Apps</strong> Team<br />
insight into the inspiration <strong>for</strong> the app. Cost: <strong>Free</strong><br />
4) MedPage Today Mobile<br />
What’s not to like about MedPage Today The website is a<br />
fantastic resource <strong>for</strong> medical professionals, and a lot of the<br />
content is in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania School<br />
of Medicine – further securing its academic credentials. Their<br />
motto is, “Putting Breaking <strong>Medical</strong> News Into Practice”, and this<br />
app helps you with this cause via mobile access.<br />
In addition, you can get audio and video through this app, allowing<br />
you to get CME credits while using MedPage Today mobile. With<br />
the most recent update, MedPage Today mobile now allows you to<br />
do a full text search of all articles published on their website since<br />
1/1/07, definitely a welcome addition.<br />
5) <strong>Medical</strong> Radio<br />
This is a product of ReachMD, probably most famous <strong>for</strong> its XM<br />
Satellite Radio broadcast feeds (XM 160) of medical in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
– and these feeds are available live through this app.<br />
<strong>Medical</strong>Radio allows you to keep up to date with changing clinical<br />
guidelines, and I’ve found the medical talks to be in<strong>for</strong>mative and<br />
useful.<br />
We haven’t done a full review of this app, but the original<br />
iteration of this app, ReachMD CME, made it into our old top<br />
medical apps list.<br />
6) MedCalc<br />
We’ve always been fans of MedCalc, now the most popular free<br />
medical calculator in the App Store. There’s not much to say about<br />
it, other than it’s created by physicians who are dedicated to<br />
keeping it as a free resource <strong>for</strong> medical professionals. Also, don’t<br />
<strong>for</strong>get Epocrates Rx (free) has a great medical calculator built.
<strong>Top</strong> <strong>10</strong> <strong>Free</strong> <strong>iPhone</strong> <strong>Medical</strong> <strong>Apps</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Health</strong> <strong>care</strong> <strong>Professionals</strong><br />
by i<strong>Medical</strong><strong>Apps</strong> Team<br />
7) NeuroMind<br />
NeuroMind is one of the two medical apps on this list that we<br />
haven’t reviewed on i<strong>Medical</strong><strong>Apps</strong>. It’s a great tool <strong>for</strong> medical<br />
students, neurology residents, and even neurosurgeons. It<br />
contains a wide range of in<strong>for</strong>mation, from basic neuro‐anatomy<br />
to the WHO Safe Surgery checklist items.<br />
8. Drug trials<br />
Drug Trials is an app we featured on one of our “recently<br />
released free medical apps” list. If you find yourself using<br />
clinicaltrials.gov, then this is a great app to have. It’s packed<br />
with features such as eligibility criteria, e‐mail out functionality,<br />
and it can even use google maps to show the location of the<br />
trial!<br />
We reviewed another similar app awhile back, Clinical Trials, but<br />
Drug Trials is just as good or slightly better. And unlike Clinical<br />
Trials($7.99), this one is free.<br />
9) Eponyms (<strong>for</strong> students)<br />
Webster’s definition of Eponym is: one <strong>for</strong> whom or which<br />
something is or is believed to be named. In medicine, we<br />
encounter this all the time when memorizing obscure diseases or<br />
pathologies. This app contains over 1700 of these medical<br />
eponyms with short descriptions of each – A nice learning tool<br />
<strong>for</strong> students.<br />
Note, this is the “student” version of the app. If you’re no longer<br />
a student the developers ask you to download the $1.99 version<br />
of the app – and it contains the same content.
<strong>Top</strong> <strong>10</strong> <strong>Free</strong> <strong>iPhone</strong> <strong>Medical</strong> <strong>Apps</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Health</strong> <strong>care</strong> <strong>Professionals</strong><br />
by i<strong>Medical</strong><strong>Apps</strong> Team<br />
<strong>10</strong>) MSK Radiology Teaching File – LITE<br />
This was another app we featured on one of our regular<br />
columns, “recently released free medical apps”. MSK Radiology<br />
is the lite version of Radiopaedia.org’s Radiology Teaching Files:<br />
Volume 3, an app designed to teach radiology. Although this is<br />
a lite version, I was surprised to find out how much in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
it packs in <strong>10</strong> full cases.<br />
This lite version comes included with some relatively common<br />
pathologies and even though it’s free, you could definitely get<br />
some good learning accomplished if you’re a resident or a<br />
medical student. There are other LITE versions of<br />
Radiopaedia.org’s content with similar <strong>for</strong>mats. Usually I<br />
wouldn’t include a LITE version of an application in this list of<br />
free medical apps, but this app had plenty of content. Also, if you find the cases useful the<br />
full cost is $4.99 <strong>for</strong> each set of 50 cases, not a bad price.<br />
Conclusion:<br />
So there you have it, the top <strong>10</strong> free medical apps <strong>for</strong> the <strong>iPhone</strong> and iPod Touch that are actually useful to medical<br />
professionals.<br />
Iltifat Husain, Yousif Alkadhi MD, and Satish Misra MD contributed to this post.<br />
At the time of this post these applications were free, this can obviously change over time.
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