The Best 7 Android Medical Apps Of 2013
If you are in the medical field of activity, then this article is addressed to you and to you only so you’d better make sure you take your time to check it out as we are going to shed some light on a few apps for your Android devices that will bring you closer to delivering a more professional and high-quality treatment on a daily basis.
It is common knowledge that when you are a doctor, people are counting on you, let it be your patients or their families, so there is no room for error in this profession whatsoever. You are facing the challenges of saving lives on a daily basis and you have to make quick decisions at every step along the process, basing your entire judgement on your previous long years of study in the medical school and on your direct personal hands-on experience you have gained so far. But what happens when you are facing a split-second decision you need to take and you are not 100% sure about the right thing to do and the right approach to take in order to solve that crisis situation your patient has been confronted with in that very second. If you immediately think that you can solve this by running to the medical book that describes the best procedure on the matter, think again. It only takes a few seconds to lose a patient and you know you can not afford this happening. Yes, it would be so much easier if you could simply carry your entire collection of medical books on you, but simply deciding which of them to take out and check is going to take up to a few minutes and this is crucial time you can not afford to waste.
This is where we come along and give you the best solution to your problem – so all you need to do is embrace technology and let us drive you towards the most approachable and easy to access solution for your problem-solving. What we ask of you is to grasp the idea that you can comprise all the medical books and implicit references in an easy to access pocket guide that you can carry along with you at all times. Yes, I am referring to making use of your Android device as the umbrella and encyclopedia for all the info you need to find in just a few seconds. This will not only improve your taking-decision process, but shall also bring you closer to the most relevant and recent updates in your field and you will always be on top of all critical situations. All you need to know shall simply be in your pocket, and the Google Play Store will become your best friend in helping you reach out to all types of apps that will make your working experience so much more enjoyable. See now – there is a segment for every type of activity, and even the medical staff can benefit from the latest perks of technology.
Deciding to adopt this method shall soon reveal all of its advantages, and when you find yourself in a critical situation you will no longer have to be consumed by the thought of having to spend a good amount of time checking one book or another to get it right. You can simply take out your Android device from your pocket, and then start navigating through the app that you find the most useful in order to solve your dilemma, right there and then.
Taking into consideration that you can find a multitude of apps on Google Play, we have taken our time and put effort into presenting you with a few of the best apps on the market when it comes to the medical field, and we highly recommend you to read this article all the way through and decide for yourself which of the highlighted apps shall be your chosen one.
Medscape
The first best android app we have chosen to present to you is Medscape, and this one represent the topnotch medical resource for clinical use. What is perhaps even more important is that it is addressed to such a wide audience range that not only physicians can benefit from its perks, but it can also be used by all other parties involved in the medical process, be it nurses, medical students, and any other medical health professionals for that matter. What Medscape uses as platform when it gives you its medical news is actually Medscape News, and by selecting Medcape you can benefit from top daily news from any of the 34 specialties. You will of course not require to access all the info from all existing specialties, so in order to make the range smaller all you need to do is simply select the specialties that you are most interested in.
You will be able to search through an entire Medscape News and MEDLINE databases. Moreover, not only can you navigate through these databases, but you can also choose to save the specific articles you want to later on read and then simply read them offline. Once you have chosen this app, you open yourselves up to a multitude of prescribing and safety information. And there is no exaggeration when saying “a multitude”, as you can access info on over 8,000 branded and generic drugs, OTC drugs, and herbals and supplements.
When it comes to different types of disease, condition and procedures – you can shed light on any aspects you find important by checking out the over 4,000 available evidence-based articles authored by leading physicians and experts. And the benefits’ list does go on, including approx. 600 step-by-step procedure videos, and 100 tables and protocols.
There are no warnings I should bring to your attention when it comes to the wide range of info Medscape can offer you. However I do want to take a minute to let you know that you shall need to be cautious about one thing, and one thing only. For all of you users out there with rooted devices and ad-blocker software, be informed that it might happen that you experience connectivity errors while using Medscape. If you have made up your mind to go for the Medscape app, just be informed that the devices that are supported by Medscape are the Motorola Droid, the Motorola Droid X, Motorola Droid 2, HTC Incredible, Samsung Galaxy S, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
WebMD for Android
The second app we want to draw your attention upon is the WebMD for Android. This again is a very useful app that shall ensure you 24/7 access to mobile-optimized health information. Additionally, you shall also benefit from a series of decision support tools that will ultimately lead to an overall and effortless improvement in your decision making and health enhancement hard work. Just to mention a few of the tools that you can gain access to, I shall include WebMD's Symptom Checker, Drugs & Treatments, First Aid Information, and Local Health Listings, but the list can go on.
An innovative element the app brings to the game is the 3D figure it encompasses, which allows doctors to effortlessly determine what exactly their patient’s problem is by a mere tap on the part of the body where the patient feels a certain degree of discomfort in. This shall decidedly contribute to a faster and more steady medical approach from then on. Moreover, another inherent advantage is that the search can be narrowed down by simply ticking the symptoms the patient presents and then checking out a conclusive and comprising list of potential conditions and issues.
As was the case with MedScape, it is also possible with WebMD for doctors to gain constant access to WebMD's extensive database, where they can check out information on Drugs, Supplements and Vitamins, as well as being able to access Uses, Side Effects and Warnings. This opens up the path for doctors to give insightful and also accurate preparation advice to patients in regards to any any possible discomfort they might experience.
Another really useful concept WebMD introduces is its Pill Identification Tool and I will try to summarize the concept in just a few words. What the Pill Identification Tool basically does is to help identify the specific pills a patient is currently taking. This shall therefore take the pressure off patients to squeeze their brains out in order to remember the complicated names of the pills they are taking – as this newly introduced tool can very easily follow a series of elements such as shape, color and imprint in order to identify prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines.
I have just chosen to highlight a small number of the many features available with WebMD, but I do highly recommend you to look into this app more thoroughly and simply discover and check out on your own all the other useful concepts and tools it has in store. Moreover, I am sure you shall be pleased to find out that you can download this app for free from the Google Play Store.
Diseases Codes ICD-10
The next app I have chosen to present to your in this guidelines is the Diseases Codecs ICD-10, and this again is one of my favorite apps on the market. It is basically a virtual encyclopedia when it comes to all the international diseases you can think of, and they are all just a click away. Therefore it shall be of most use as well if it happens that you are finding yourself on a holiday or somewhere remotely when somebody comes to resort to your medical advice on an issue he or she might be facing in that very instant. So forget about language barriers or other types of difficulties – you can simply choose to take out your device from your pocket, to open up this app and instantly check the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) – it shall always be at your disposal no matter what.
The app has been developed by TrofoSystems and is of course only applicable on Android, as mentioned at the very beginning of the article. The app is geared towards helping you determine disease codes via its objective and also fast interface. In order to achieve this, you can simply make queries by typing the disease name as well as by code. And if you also feel like you are not in a very inquisitive set of mind, then you can also leave it up to the auto-complete search to get the job done for you, hence there is nothing to worry about, this app is always on your side.
Moreover, once you start to use this app on a constant basis, you can notice that the most-accessed codes can ultimately be saved in a bookmark list for easy access and reference. And I have not even yet revealed the biggest advantage this app has. I will break it to you right now and tell you that you do not even need to be connected to the Internet to access data, which makes everything all the more easy to use. If you are curios as to how this is possible, well the answer is quite simple. In a nutshell, all that information the app holds is stored in a single download of 1 MB, which means that if you want to do so, you can even install it on your SD card. But do not hold your breath – you will indeed need to have Internet access when it comes to disease-related ads.
Epocrates
Epocrates also presents similar features with the previous app, and it brings you one step closer to immediate access when it comes to reliable drug, disease, and diagnostic information no matter where exactly you might be. On top of that, you can also benefit with Epocrates from a free drug application – entitled Epocrates Rx. What Epocrates Rx does is that it features thousands of drug monographs, a drug-drug interaction checker to make sure that patients won't get a cocktail of unfortunate side-effects. The list goes on with its being equipped with a pill identifier mechanism for the times when you need to detect what types of pills you have and then just label them correctly, and health plan formularies on the other hand.
Not only can you as a medical health professionals make sure you check out a drug of your choice starting with finding details from its common term to its full name, but you can also check out what that drug’s most common uses are or what its reported applicable doses are. As mentioned, there are different types of features that this app brings to the table, and I will continue by enumerating a few more just to highlight the importance of this app: for instance, doctors can also check a number of infectious diseases and their empiric therapy, but they can furthermore also see their specific therapy, and the list can go on and on, but I will leave it up to you to try this app out and decide for yourself.
Having tried out this app, you can decide for yourself if it is sufficient or not for what you plan on using it. If you do happen to think that you could use having a few more features and functions with it, then we are happy to inform you that we have a solution for this as well, and that you can also purchase Epocrates' premium applications. There are quite a few to be mentioned, but I will only bring Epocrates Essentials Deluxe, Epocrates Essentials, and Epocrates Rx Pro into your attention for now. For your info – Epocrates is available for free download from the Google Play Store.
Skyscape Medical Resources
As its title gives away, the Skyscape Medical Resources is an app that fosters quite a wide range of medical resources, so if this is what you are looking for you might have found your match. What this app can be cataloged as is a guide for anybody involved in the decision-support mechanism that needs a tool to provide fast answer to whatever topic they need enlightenment with, may them have any type of role in the medical professionals, starting from doctors to nurses and even med students.
Again – this app is available for free download on the Google Play Store, and you will be happy to know that you can access any type of medical resources such as drug information, medical calculators, and clinical information on more than 850 topics via the Skyscape Medical Resources app.
To be more specific, you can also get access to RxDrugs, which provides comprehensive information on thousands of brands and generics with interactions, including a multi-drug analyzer tool, pill images and over 400 integrated dosing calculators. And RxDrugs is not the one and only perk Skyscape Medical Resources comes packed with, but you can also get Archimedes, which is a medical calculator that encompasses over 200 interactive tools, Outlines in Clinical Medicine for evidence-based clinical information on hundreds of diseases and symptom-related topics, and MedAlert for in-context and specialty focused journal summaries.
If you shall still be hungry for more and you decide you want to get your hands on something else as well, then you can always simply purchase any of the 600 premium resources that cover over 35 medical specialties and then simply check them out via the Skyscape Medical Resources app.
PubMed Mobile
We are heading towards another area of expertise now and we are going to give you all the heads up when it comes to an app that you can find useful if you find yourselves in the position of having to write a paper on a given topic. Therefore, as it generally happens with papers’ writing, you shall have to do your best and compile a great deal of journal citations to be able to go forward on your own research. We have now come up with a solution for you – and this is PubMed Mobile, that will give you the chance to access and scroll through its PubMed database where you can find over 21 million citations for a wide range of articles and journals, with a main focus on the bio-medical and life science journals.
There are different elements to help and narrow down your search, and you can start by making use of the standard keyword search function, and then simply just save your search queries. What this will do is enable you to save selected citations for an easy access later when you do have the time to go through with it, or furthermore to simply share these sources with anybody else you would need to share them with via email. You can simply link to it if you have a fully-available article.
This app is pretty similar to all the programs you could normally access for any type of social activities, so if you do want to post a comment for an article for public viewing, then you can do it without delay. Moreover, you can also choose to write a note or comment to yourself, or also view public comments for an article at a later stage.
You can also get PubMed Mobile for free on the Google Play Store, and if you do happen to want to benefit from more features and to let’s say search for a specific author or a particular journal you might need to access, then you have an additional option to simply purchase PubMed Mobile Pro for a small fee.
Calculate by QxMD
This is one of my other fav apps and you will see why in just a matter of phrases. But let’s start with the beginning and then move on to the juicy stuff.
First and foremost, this app has been the product of QxMD Medical Software, Inc. who developed it in tight collaboration with a series of clinical experts who all pertain to very different and diverse backgrounds. As guessed, the implicit result of this collaboration is Calculate by QxMD. What this app has so special is that it doesn’t fail to provide advanced clinical calculators and decision support tools for health providers. Moreover, it is both addressed to medical health professionals and patients, and gives an accurate insight into references with Pubmed integration.
What Calculate basically offers is a focus on bringing up tools that are of great use to clinical practice and that ultimately contribute to impact diagnosis, treatment, or determining prognosis. What most users appreciate most about this app is its very simple, classic, elegant and somewhat intuitive user interface design, thanks to which users can access more than 150 unique calculators and decision support tools without any effort whatsoever.
In order to get the work done – you can simply proceed with selecting from any of its numerous calculators, and you shall see that their being grouped together hugely contributes to an easy access. The universe of options OxMD provides to you is unlimited, and you can decide to select whatever might suit you at that time, be it general calculators, those specifically for cardiology, or many others.
Secondly, I must also inform you that if you need a tool that helps you with reducing and also predicting preoperative guide treatment, or even determine prognosis, or dose, calculate, classify, manage, stage, understand and diagnose – then this is the app you need to download. Just like the rest of the app presented so far, you can download Calculate by QxMD for free from the Google Play Store.