Monday, October 3, 2011

Apps for Healthcare Educators

I have an iPhone. Some of you have Androids, BlackBerrys or other cell phone. And all of us have a various set of apps on them. Some are for fun; in my case, I play solitaire when I, oh, wait while my wife tries on clothes at the local Von Maur. I have various newspapers on my phone, and I also have a wonderful little app called MedCalc 3000. This is an app that provides you immediate calculations of various measures used in evidence-based practice, such as sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios, confidence intervals, and so on. When I bought this app, at the high cost of just $4.99, I thought that there might be other good apps available. There are. I am not sure that they can be found for all phoe platforms, but I would be surprised if not. Here are a few good ones.

MedCalc 3000- you can read about this program at http://medcalc3000.com/pubapps/statist.htm. There are a number of different versions of the MedCalc program, some more for specialty physicians, but the one I note here has utility for those of us- which is all of us- involved in teaching with the tools of evidence-based practice. This little app lets you insert numbers from papers you read and then will calculate all sorts of statistics for you. Easy to use, intuitive and a good find. It costs $4.99, as noted above.

Med Calc- this is not related to the above app. This one is a more in-depth program that gives you access to many complicated formulas used in healthcare. For example, there is a body mass calculator in this program and there are many others. Take a look at http://itunes.apple.com/app/medcalc-medical-calculator/id299470331?mt=8. And it’s free.

Epocrates- we chiropractors cannot and do not prescribe drugs. But our patients still take them. And they take a lot of tem and of many different kinds. This program is the best available online phone-based app to easily locate information about the drugs our patients are taking. It has the additional strength of letting you investigate drug-drug interactions and drug-supplement interactions. It is free, but may cost money to upgrade annually as new information becomes available. Glance at it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/epocrates/id281935788?mt=8

NEJM This Week- this is a free app that allows you to scan new information coming from the New England Journal of Medicine, which is one of the world’s most influential medical journals. Here is an overview for the program: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nejm-this-week/id373156254?mt=8

iRadiology- I will defer to our radiologists for other recommendations for good apps, and I know we have our strengths here, but this is one of the top programs for interns and residents to use. Take a look here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iradiology/id346440355?mt=8

There is a good overview of apps for doctors at http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/medical/the-best-medical-iphone-apps-for-doctors-and-med-students-1100709/. The author links you to a couple dozen excellent programs. This is an amazing technological innovation, and I would love to hear what apps you find most useful.

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