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Yes, There is a Medical App for That

At this years AGS Annual Meeting, Manuel Eskildsen, Alice Pomidor, Amit Shah, Niharika Suchak, and I led a session aimed teaching how to integrate mobile applications and other emerging technologies into clinical education and patient care.

As part of this session, we created a brief handout for attendees describing some of the apps and resources we use in our own teaching and clinical practice.  We thought it may also be helpful to share this with our GeriPal audience.  We also would love to hear from you on what apps you use in your teaching or clinical practice (please add to the comment section below the handout):

Yes, There’s an App for That: How to Integrate Mobile Applications and Other Emerging Technologies into Clinical Education and Patient Care
Apps and Resources List

American Geriatrics Society 2015 Annual Meeting 

Manuel A. Eskildsen, MD, MPH; Alice Pomidor, MD; Amit Shah, MD; Niharika Suchak, MD; Eric Widera, MD

Apps/Resources Mentioned by Dr. Eric Widera (Clinical Teaching and Patient Care) 

  1. Seeing the world as our patients do:
    •  VisionSim:   Simulates visual problems (excellent for empathy exercises and teaching importance of addressing vision in comprehensive geriatric assessments)
  2. Multimorbidity and Geriatric Principles:
  3. Prognosticating

Apps/Resources Mentioned by Dr. Amit Shah (Massive, Flipped and Spaced Learning)

  1. Flipped Learning
  2. Spaced Learning
  3. Massive Open and Online Courses and Degrees (MOOCs and MOODs)

Apps/Resources Mentioned by Dr. Alice Pomidor (Patient education mobile application resources)

  1. Socialwellth – “Prescriptive Digital Health”
  2. Health tap: top 10 in various categories, overall top 10
  3. ALZ–Alzheimer’s Association Pocketcard
    • Has clinical information, interactive assessment tools such as clock, educational materials that can be directly e-mailed to patients/caregivers. Free at App Store and Google play)
  4. MNA–Mini-Nutritional Assessment
    • Recommended by American Dietetic Association, Hartford, AMDA, European Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ESPEN). Has supporting website at www.mna-elderly.com. Available in multiple languages. App is the short screening version and results can be e-mailed. Free at App Store only for iPhone. Sponsored by Nestle.
  5. webMD–#1 most used general health website with 12 billion page views per year (same group that does Medscape)

Apps/Resources Mentioned by Dr. Niharika Suchak (Mobile Apps in Medical Education)

  1. Epocrates (drug information, drug interactions, pill ID etc.)
  2. Pulm Tools for PORT score or pneumonia severity index calculator
  3. uCentral from Unbound medicine: (5 Minute Clinical Consult, MEDLINE search, calculators, textbooks, guidelines, systematic reviews, etc.)
  4. ePSS (USPSTF health maintenance recommendations by age groups)
  5. Dynamed (a clinical reference tool for use at the ‘point-of-care’ with clinically-organized summaries)
  6. Pepid Clinical Rotation Companion (point-of-care reference, drug database, and decision support tool)
  7. Access Medicine (online medical resource with leading medical textbooks, videos, self-assessment, drug database, quick reference, and decision support tools)

Other notable apps not mentioned above that you might want to try:

A curated library for health professional who provide care for geriatrics patients which is updated: http://upmc.com/agingapplibrary. Maintained by Dr. Steven Handler and Dr. Nagib Manov

1. Mobile Apps for Clinical Teaching:

  • Eponyms (for fun!)
  • Agile Diagnosis
  • Diagnosaurus (large lists of differentials for chief complaints)
  • Visual Dx (online and app– great derm reference)
  • Medical Calculators: QXMD, MedCalc, and Mediquation
  • Antibiotics: Sanford Antibiotic Guide, the Hopkins Antibiotic Guide, or the Antibiotic Advisor
  • Prognosis-Your Diagnosis (teaching preclinical/early clinical students)
  • Radiology 2.0 (cases and teaching)
  • Casefiles
  • Heart sounds teaching apps (many): Best: Littman, Blaufuss (great!), iMurmur
  • Teaching anatomy: Visual Anatomy and Netter’s

2. Mobile apps for clinical care

  • CDC Vaccination schedule
  • Hospice Apps: Vitas, Hospice by the Bay, etc
  • Medscape (full feature reference app) goes with webMD (patient level)
  • Dynamed (like Up To Date)
  • Skyscape (similar to Medscape)
  • Drug information apps:
  • Micromedex (most comprehensive drug information program)
  • Lexi-comp (great drug information app)
  • Epocrates #1 used/rated app by doctors for quick drug info, pill pictures, interactions

3. Mobile apps for patient use/patient education use:

  • UK’s NHS Health Apps Library: apps.nhs.uk (reviews apps for accuracy and posts them by topic for patients)
  • DrawMD (great for patient education when you need clear anatomy pictures)
  • HealthTap overall top 10 for iOS (2014): 1) MyFitnessPal.Com 2)Weight Watchers 3) Lose It 4) White Nose Lite 5) First Aid (Red Cross) 6) Runkeeper 7) Stoke Riskometer 8) Emergency First Aid and Treatment guide 9) Instant Heart Rate 10) Fooducate
  • Healthtap overall top 10 for Android (2014): 1)Weight Watchers 2) White Noise Lite 3) Lose It 4) First Aid (Red Cross) 5) Runkeeper 6) Emergency First Aid and Treatment guide 7) Instant Heart Rate 8) Fooducate 9) Glucose buddy 10) Pocket First Aid and CPR
  • Best Alternative Medicine App: About Herbs (Memorial Sloan Kettering)
  • Best Medication Apps: Meditation Oasis; Mindfulness Trainer
  • For General Medical Knowledge: webMD and Mayo Clinic apps
  • For Arthritis: ArthritisID
  • Hearing screening: UHear
  • Find cheaper medications and costs of medications by pharmacy: GoodRx and GoodRx.com
  • Pill reminders (many): 1) Drugs.com Pill reminder 2) RxmindMe 3) Pill Monitor 4) MedMinder

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