Smartphone apps and mobile technology are changing the way both patients and doctors approach healthcare. In fact, more and more software developers are creating apps specifically designed for physician use in a hospital or clinical setting.
“Physicians can now explore disease pathology and review medical literature anywhere and anytime,” explains Iltifat Husain, M.D., founder of iMedicalApps. “Physicians can use medical apps to enhance their own learning as well as teach patients at the bedside and improve the patient-physician relationship.”
Research 2 Guidance, a market research company that focuses on the global app economy and mobile health applications, reports that as of November 2015, there were more than 165,000 healthcare apps. Obviously not every app is useful. However, government organizations such as the CDC offer reputable medical smartphone applications.
Physicians: Instead of clogging your device with every app available, try the following four freebies.
- CDC Vaccine Schedules: If you regularly recommend or administer vaccines, you’ll find the CDC’s schedule app to be a helpful resource. It’s optimized for tablet and smartphone use, and professionals can access all recommended immunizations schedules and footnotes. Changes in schedules are released through app updates, so you never miss a critical change. Features of the app include:
- Color coding that coordinates with printed schedules
- Hyperlinked vaccine names that open as pop-ups with dose specifics
- Catchup schedule for children that shows minimum dosing intervals
- Related vaccine resources and websites
- Read by QxMD: Read by QxMD is a “personalized digital medical journal” featuring your favorite journals and articles in one place. Its simple interface allows for easy reading and sharing, and you can even search PubMed for more articles. Features of the app include:
- Thousands of browsable topics
- Ability to search for PubMed articles
- Access to full-text articles via university/institutional subscriptions and open-access publishers
- Article sharing via email, Twitter and Facebook
- One-tap access to full-text PDFs
- CDC FastStats: FastStats is the official application of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. With the FastStats app, physicians can have easy access to statistics about topics such as diseases and conditions, healthcare and insurance, reproductive health, injuries and family life. When your smartphone or tablet is connected to the Internet, the app’s content is automatically updated, so you always have the most up-to-date statistics available. Features include:
- Up-to-date statistics on more than 100 public health topics
- Ability to highlight and bookmark data
- Data sharing with colleagues through social media
- Epocrates: The free version of the Epocrates app lets physicians review safety information for thousands of brand, generic and OTC drugs; identify a pill based on its imprint code or physical characteristics; access national and regional healthcare insurance formularies; and use a secure text-messaging feature to communicate with care teams. However, for $175/year, physicians can also access clinical practice guidelines, alternative medications, coding information and lab guides. Features include:
- Ability to check for harmful drug-drug interactions (up to 30 drugs at a time)
- Timely medical news and research information
- Dozens of calculations, such as body mass index and glomerular filtration rate
- Directory of providers for consults and referrals
