In healthcare, education is not just about writing essays and reading relevant articles. Studying medicine requires medical literature and textbooks, and the mobility and convenience that medical apps bring make the content accessible for doctors.
The other reason why medical apps are good for training is that they offer practical, real-life experience with the simulation of real-life practice and improve data quality in healthcare. Recently developed apps use simulation and gamification in the virtual environment of a smartphone.
What are the most popular healthcare apps?
#1 CPR Game
This healthcare app is created as a game and geared towards emergency room physicians. The app goes through advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) algorithms. CPR Game takes gamification to another level and assesses users’ performance in extreme detail.
The app includes almost every type of ACLS and critical care case where users can practice in real-time. Different reviews from doctors claim that the app helps improve skills in different scenarios. The app helps to prioritize actions, and systematically reviews all steps like the ACLS approach, etc.
#2 BurnMed
This app has a great story behind its creation. Physicians at Johns Hopkins created this app inspired by the “mass casualty incident in Kenya where a gas tanker exploded, killing one hundred people instantly and severely burning many others with an estimate of the surface area of the body using a dynamic three-dimensional model. The app allows you to quickly calculate fluid requirements and provide a user-friendly audiovisual guide for early treatment of burn patients.”
Many people who were burned in that incident didn’t receive proper treatment because of overwhelmed local health resources though the app may have reduced the casualties.
The main purpose of the app is to provide a 15-minute training on initial burn management. This app was a finalist for the 2012 iMedicalApps-Medicine 2.0 mHealth Award. The user interface of the app is neat and accurate showing the areas of the body that have been burned allowing doctors to calculate the total body surface area (TBSA) affected using either the Rule of Nines or a Lund-Browder Chart, and the percentage is then added into the Parkland Formula to calculate fluid requirements.
Users can draw the burn areas onto a #D anatomic body and thanks to diagrams, calculate TBSA. The settings are changeable and you can use different diagrams for different patients.
The positive reviews claim that the app is very easy to use, and it has focused multimedia to teach the concepts in burn management. The app is accurate and offers relevant clinical calculations. The main disadvantages are that calculations don’t have an explanation, and you need to buy iPad and iPhone apps separately. There is also no teaching on superficial wounds.
# 3 QuantiaMD
This app was created by the digital health marketing company that offers medical reference apps and resources like Omnio to doctors with its Physicians Interactive (PI) tool. The company has acquired Waltham, Massachusetts-based Quantia Communications, which is the parent company of the physician social network QuantiaMD.
The app is free and offers physicians online resources, articles, presentations, and other resources. All the information and presentations are categorized by topics, and users can earn certificates, Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits, or redeemable Q points.
Everyone can send a presentation, and if it’s accepted users can view it. Users can also participate in discussions, and leave comments under the presentations. And they also can subscribe to different communities.
The users who added positive reviews say that they like free access to the app, ease of use, a friendly user interface, a diverse range of topics, and short presentations. They also like that the app offers great client care, free CME, redeemable Amazon.com Q points.
The main disadvantages are that clinical tools are extensive and there is no access to PDF files on the app.
# 4 Human Anatomy Atlas
This is a great app for those who want to understand the human body and anatomy. Human Anatomy Atlas includes a huge amount (around thousands) of models that help in understanding how the human body works and what it looks like. The app offers textbook –level definitions, and over 10,000 anatomical models in different languages. Human Anatomy Atlas was selected as a winner in different nominations and received a gold many times in different mobile apps competitions.
This is a great app to study anatomy fast and on-the-go. The app includes complete male and female anatomy models which can be dissected, it has different muscle actions, sample animations, and much more. It is available on different OS and devices.
# 5 Epocrates
This app is very popular among physicians and offers a wide range of drug-related information that is very useful for doctors. The app has 1,000,000+ downloads and is rated 4.3 on the Google Play store. What’s great in this app is that doctors can quickly review all necessary data on drug prescribing and safety information on a wide range of brands, over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, and generics. They can also check for potentially harmful drug interactions for up to 30 drugs at one time.
Also, the app brings the opportunity to check insurance for drug coverage information on national and regional healthcare insurance formularies. Thanks to Epocrates, doctors can identify a pill’s physical characteristics and imprint code, as well as performing calculations, such as body mass index (BMI) and Glomerular filtration rate (GFR). The app also helps in accessing timely medical news and other research data.
Wrapping Up
Mobile applications for training physicians have a wide range of benefits not only for doctors and their patients but for the development of healthcare. Medical apps for training doctors are cheap or free and accessible to all. Due to its digital nature, every doctor in the world can access the most current knowledge from anywhere in the world. These apps can be more up-to-date than any library in a top-rated medical university.
