A list of some of the best medical software for iPhone

One of the frustrations of the iTunes Store is the number of supposed "Medical" apps that are not designed for healthcare providers or students. The folks at SoftwareAdvice.com, a commercial site that is paid for through vendor links, offers a great page highlighting some of the best medical software out there for iPhone and iPod Touch. Out of the over 1500 medical apps they determined only about half were actually of use to professionals. I mostly agree with their list. Also be sure to check out the spreadsheet of the over 700 medical apps. It's a great tool for finding apps you never knew about.

Statcoder apps now available for iPhone

Some of the best apps for healthcare providers on the Palm were made by Statcoder. My favorite was STAT Growth which was great for calculating kids height/weight/BMI percentiles. After my migration to an iPhone it was the app I missed most as there were no other iPhone apps that duplicated that functionality into one app. I am happy to say that all of the STAT titles are now available on the iPhone/iPod Touch. They can be a little hard to find as the search for statcoder turned up empty. They are available under the business name of Austin Physician Productivity.

They have 13 free and paid applications for sale. Including apps for immunization, ICD-9 coding, evaluation and management coding, lab coding, and H1N1 info. Prices range from free to $20.

I found the STAT Growth to work well but its interface is a little crude in appearance. After entering the numbers it is not clear that you have to tap on the screen to get remove the number pad. One great feature is a color coded blue/pink title bar as you select boy or girl measurements. The plotting on the CDC growth charts is neat but too small to use in a meaningful way. The $7 price seems high for a one trick app but right now it is the only one that can do all the functions that its old Palm version could do. I still recommend this application for physicians and nurses who have to plot height, weight, and BMI percentiles for large numbers of children at a time.

Lexi-Comp offering 30-day trials

Lexi-Comp announced today that their databases can now be used for 30 days as a trial before purchase of their subscription. Lexi-Comp has a wide variety of medical titles for the iPhone or iPod Touch. Subscriptions are 1, 2, or 3 years. They offer suites for different specialities that can save money versus buying individual titles. This is a great addition of a feature that has long been available for other handheld computers. To purchase the titles you should first download the free front-end Lexi-Comp application on iTunes.

Medical School offers iPhone apps

The Medical College of Georgia is now offering a suite of iPhone applications for its students. They have a suite of six campus specific apps such as a faculty directory, a GPS-enabled map, and event calendar. They also have a suite of six medical applications such as a medical calculator, ICD-9 code guide, and medical abbreviation guide.

This is a great idea for students. Campus-specific apps support students in their campus life while the medical apps are a great clinical-learning aide.

Importance of iPhone in Healthcare recognized

Businessweek has published an article "Calling Dr. iPhon e" that relates how important the Apple iPhone has become for some physicians. While the article discusses the medical applications it also mentions how the iPhone can interface with medical records.

Handheld computers in medicine have mostly been used for references or calculators. The next step seems to be how to integrate electronic health records with a handheld device. The iPhone seems a good candidate for pioneering that area.

Medical Accessories for iPhone to come

The March 17 announcement from Apple of the 3.0 operating system for the iPhone had a component of interest to those in health care. The iPhone and iPod will now permit the addition of hardware accessories through the familiar iPod jack. The presentation showed the possibility of a blood glucose monitor that would directly read and record on the iPhone. Other possibilities are a sphygmomanometer or other physiologic monitoring equipment.

There are no devices yet, and the software will not be publicly available until the summer, but this is great opportunity for medical hardware developers or healthcare personnel seeking ways to make patient self-monitoring easier.

The presentation can be seen at the Apple 3.0 Preview .

Nursing Central for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch

In just the last few weeks we have seen Skyscape and Lexi-Comp offer medical references for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Unbound Medicine has now taken aim at the nursing market with a bundle of references of clinical use to nurses called Nursing Central .

Installation is easy but requires a two-step process of installing the free app on the Apple device and then paying for the $159 one-year subscription online. Once the username and password are entered the titles begin to download. Be sure you are in a WiFi area when loading.

It offers the Davis Drug Guide, Lab and Diagnostic Tests, Diseases and Disorders reference, and Taber's Medical Dictionary. There is also a Medline Journal citation and abstract explorer. The Nursing Central app is offered free on iTunes but unlike Skyscape it has no free references for download. However, unlike Skyscape the references will reside on the iPhone or iPod Touch and continue to work after the subscription period of one year. During that year you have unlimited free updates.

The Nursing Central titles stick much closer to Apple Guidelines for the user interface. The Skyscape titles look more like Palm apps. Performance is good and I had no crashes. The user interface is pretty intuitive as the icons are clear about their purpose. Even the front page icons for each title are beautifully rendered. One shortcoming is that some titles in appendices get truncated due the use of large font sizes. I hope that is corrected in an update.

The titles themselves are nothing new and have been staples of the Palm and Windows Mobile platform for years. Residing on the iPhone, however, gives a whole new life to these references. The large screen and easy navigation without a stylus makes using them a pleasure. Things like reading a table are now easy.

One aspect of these legacy titles is the lack of multimedia. The older platforms were so limited in graphics and memory we got used to only seeing text. I look forward to newer titles giving us high quality graphics, more use of color, audio, and video.