Best Medical Apps

The Augmented PA If you havent noticed the medical app business is booming and for good reason. As physician assistant students, PAs or practicing medical professionals we need to synthesize a tremendous amount of data and be able to recall it in a pinch. We are short on time, overloaded with information and expected to perform perfectly in all situations. Thus, we areexcellentcandidates for a bit of computer-aided iOS augmentation. Over the years I have tried (and continue to try) just about every medical app on the market. Distilled here is my extensive list of the very best (free and paid) medical apps designed to cover you in just about every situation. The apps below will make you and your patients better because sometimes computers do work better than humans, lets just hope they dont take our jobsin our lifetime. The Best Medical Apps for Physician Assistant Students, PAs, and MedicalProfessionals Essential Anatomy 5 3D4Medical.com, LLC This is an app I wish I had found sooner. Not only is it wonderful during the didactic phase of your studies, but I also find this to be an extremely useful tool in the clinic that my patients (and my kids) absolutely love. It has a beautifuland intuitive interface that my 5-year-old can use, it allows you to isolate individual systems, muscles, organs, etc. etc. The muscle functions add-on which allows you to visualize a muscle's action is spectacular and easily worth the extra seven bucks. I have learned more about anatomy from this app than a year's worth of undergraduate anatomy or the anatomy class I had in PA school for that matter. Without a doubt, this is the most beautiful, well-designed and essential anatomy app on the market. Download Essential Anatomy 5 Tarascon Pharmacopoeia 3D4Medical.com, LLC There are lots of pharmacopeia apps out there, but Tarascon continues to be my favorite. If you are a fan of the pocketbook (and lets be honest whos not) you will love the app. Loaded with some amazing tools (especially the pediatric dosing charts), blazing fast load times and zero advertisements the Tarascon Pharmacopoeia is well worth the one-time annual investment. Iwould find it hard to practice without it. Download Tarascon Pharmacopeia UpToDate By UpToDate, Inc. There are lots of pharmacopeia apps out there, but Tarascon continues to be my favorite. If you are a fan of the pocketbook (and lets be honest whos not) you will love the app. Loaded with some amazing tools (especially the pediatric dosing charts), blazing fast load times and zero advertisements the Tarascon Pharmacopoeia is well worth the one-time annual investment. Iwould find it hard to practice without it. Download UpToDate Pedi QuikCalc Burlington Pediatrics, PA As the name implies, this app allows you to quickly calculate medication doses based on weight and age. It also has several other useful tools such as pediatric BP goals, growth charts, vaccine recommendations and pretty much everything else you can imagine. It's a must-have app! Download Ped QuikCalc Osmosis Knowledge Diffusion Overwhelmed by PA lectures and textbooks? Osmosis' library of 1,200 animated videos allows you to retain more in less time through visual studying. Join the 600,000 students excelling in class, in rotations, and on PANCE review! To get the most from this App you will need an Osmosis Prime Plan which is worth every cent! Download Osmosis Picmonic Picmonic - The Visual Learning Community Picmonic for Physician Assistants is a visual learning system proven to improve memory recall, boost test scores and help students like you keep up with the crazy pace of PA school by turning dense medical facts into unforgettable images. With Picmonic, youll learn faster, do better in school, and pass the PANCE - guaranteed. Get 20% OFF with this link. Download Picmonic ShotsImmunizations Society of Teachers of Family Medicine If you work in family practice medicine, pediatrics or you are an urgent care PA trying to figure out whether or not your patient needs a tetanus booster this app will save the day. It is simple, updated annually, free and incredibly useful. Download this app and you will be set for life (at least from an immunization standpoint). Download shots by STFM LabGear Medical Lab Values Tests Med Gears Although this is becoming a bit less useful in the era of electronic medical records having a good lab reference is a must. If you are going to use one, Lab Gear is by far the best. LabGear sports a clean, well-designed, and simple to navigate user interface that makes finding lab values painless and extremely fast. The best part is that Lab Gear provides a differential diagnosis based on high and low abnormal values, the ability to add notes and favorite along with direct links to Wikipedia articles covering each topic. Once again, I have tried many lab apps, and this is by far the best. Download LabGear by Med Gears Diagnosaurus DDx Unbound Medicine, Inc. With Diagnosaurus you can quickly search over 1,000 diagnoses by organ system, symptom, disease state, or you can expand the list to view all entries. It even has a dont miss section in the DDx. I love apps that save lives! I have tried them all, and this is probably the best DDX app on the market. Download Diagnosaurus DDX Google Translate Google, Inc. With all the translation apps out there, it's hard to beat good ole' reliable Google Translate. Over the years, this application keeps getting better and better and includes quick and easy access to Google's web application, which makes translating in real-time a breeze. This should be in every medical provider's arsenal. Download Google Translate Microsoft Translator Microsoft Corporation A Google Translate rival in its own right, Microsoft Translator is redefining real-time translation with the ability to have free face to face live voice conversations automatically translated in real-time in over 60+ languages. This requires two devices, each with the app installed. But it can be set up in seconds and is surprisingly fast and accurate. In our clinic, we rely on paid translation services with variable results. Microsoft may have just invented the first free solution! Download Microsoft Translator EpocratesPharmacopeia Epocrates Epocrates claim to fame is that 1 out of 2 US physicians rely on Epocrates to enable better patient care by delivering the right information when its needed most. Frankly, I can see why - its comprehensive and its free! The problem I find with Epocrates versus Tarascon is that while Epocrates attempts to do it all it has become a bit bloated over the years. Thus, it can be slow to load and a data hog on all but the newest devices.Regardless, this is a top-notch pharmacopeia, with loads of added goodies. It is a beloved app considered a must-have by just about everyone for good reason. Download Epocrates MedCalc The Professional Medical Calculator Mathias Tschopp Pascal Pfiffner If you have been practicing medicine for a while you will recognize MedCalc from the old Palm Pilot days. In other words, this app has been around for a while! It is a time tested, much loved medical calculator with all the bells and whistles and a friendly user interface. Looking for the best medical calculator that money can buy? Look no further than MedCalc. p.s its free! Download MedCalc by Mathias Tschopp Pascal Pfiffner The Sandford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy Antimicrobial Therapy, Inc. The Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy ($29.99/yr In-App subscription) app includes all the information youve come to expect from theprint guide, with expanded digital-only content and numerous interactive features that make it an indispensable resource. Download the Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy The EMRA Antibiotic Guide Emergency Medicine Residents' Association The easy-to-use EMRA Antibiotic Guide helps you navigate the multitude of choices in antibiotics quickly and efficiently so you can offer your patients the best care based on the latest guidelines. Download EMRA Antibiotic Guide Perfect OB Wheel Evan Schoenberg Just as described in the App Store simple, fast, yet more thorough than any other pregnancy wheel available for the iPhone," Perfect OB Wheel is better than just a replacement for your trusty paper wheel. There must be hundreds of OB Wheels in the iOS and Android app stores, but no self-respecting PA should be without one. Of the many I have tried over the years, I keep coming back to Perfect OB Wheel. Why? Well of course, because its perfect! Download Perfect OB Wheel by Evan Schoenberg ICD-10 CM Coding Guide Unbound Medicine, Inc. I know, nothing screams excitement like looking up an ICD-10 code, but if you need to this app does the job. If you are on your computer you can Google your code as well. Download ICD-10 Medscape WebMD Since everyone else places Medscape on the top of their list of must-have apps I felt like I should include it here as well. To be honest, I have downloaded it several times but never use it. When it comes to searching conditions I prefer a simple Google search, not surprisingly this will sometimes lead to Medscape, but more often than not Wikipedia, which is increasingly becoming my semi-trusted source of medical information (admit it, you know you use it too). The best is UpToDateif you are lucky enough to have it at your institution. Download Medscape by WebMD Essential Clinical Procedures Usatine Media LLC Has your preceptor just called you in to perform a procedure? Or is it your first day on the job and you have been called to perform a bursal aspiration? If so, this is the app for you. If you cant get onto YouTube, Essential Clinical Procedures is a very solid app a great user interface and quality content, though expensive. Download Essential Clinical Procedures by Usatine Media Zygote Body 3D Anatomy Free Web App Although this is not a mobile app Zygote Body deserves a place on this pagebecause it is hands-down thebest web-based anatomy application and to top it off it is 100% Free. Once you sign up for an account you can use all the tools interactive 3D tools. It is beautiful, brilliant, and yes it is free. Click here to get started. Medical Spanish: Healthcare Phrasebook with Audio By Batoul Apps The #1 selling Medical Spanish phrasebook with audio, search, conjugations, bookmarking and unsurpassed functionality. Written by physicians, and designed by an iPhone and Mac software engineer, this eloquent and thorough phrasebook is like having a personal interpreter on call 24/7 in your pocket for a price less than a chimichanga. The goal of this app is not only to assist you in obtaining a full SOAP note with yes or no questions but to help you become more independent and confident using your Spanish. Download Medical Spanish Phrasebook with Audio Core Clinical Orthopedic Exam By Clinically Relevant Technologies It contains almost 250 tests to help in making diagnoses and also provides descriptions on how to perform these exams and video demonstrations. There are also reference reviews via the PubMed abstracts. Download Clinical Orthopedic Exam Evernote Stay Organized By Evernote To say I have tried all note organization methods may be a vast understatement. After years of trial and error, I have found Evernote to be a good long-term solution. I also like the built-in Apple note app for quickness and ease of use. But for lists that help me in my practice, I choose Evernote for its search functions. Download Evernote Notability By Ginger Labs Since they didn't have iPads when I was in PA school, we marked up notes the old fashioned way - with pens and highlighters. But those days are gone (thank God) and the powers that be have brought us amazing apps such as Notability. Notability is EVERYTHING you look for in a note-taking and annotation app. I use this to record lectures at medical conferences and take notes wherever notes are needed. You can mark up any document type (including PDFs), save audio recordings with notes, and it's all organized and easily searchable. It's a PA student's dream come true, and I promise it won't disappoint! Download Notability by Ginger Labs