The iPhone App store is a veritable treasure chest of free and cheap applications, ranging from productivity tools and reference guides to arcade games to pass the time. As of this writing, there are over 800 applications categorized as “Medical”. For the busy physician and student, wandering through the labyrinth of apps can be a daunting and time-consuming task. The apps can furthermore vary widely in intended use, as do their quality and completeness.
On The Wards has taken the task to list the top medical apps for the iPhone. “Top” is a subjective word, so here are the criteria for inclusion in this list:
listed among the most popular medical apps on iTunes;
applicable and useful for work on the wards;
does not significantly replicate the features of higher-ranked apps (with a few exceptions);
no significant program stability issues;
does not require paid subscriptions or paid downloads;
free, as in “I will be charged $0 when I receive my iTunes receipt”.
Not surprisingly, there were innumerable apps that qualified for inclusion, according to the above criteria. Many of them were excellent and very useful for work on rounds and in general inpatient care. I nevertheless had to limit the list to ten choices. Ultimately, those apps that ranked lower in popularity had to be excluded (I may reconsider them for inclusion in a future list).
Without further ado, here is the On The Wards compilation of the top 10 iPhone medical apps for the wards:
1. 
Medscape (WebMD) – This is iTune’s most popular medical app, providing a comprehensive drug reference (over 6,000 generic and brand-name drugs, hundreds of herbals and supplements), specialty-specific medical news, continuing medical education (CME), and health directory.
2. 
Epocrates Rx (Epocrates) – This venerable drug reference has served medical students, residents, and attending physicians since the early days of the original Palm OS. It has since been upgraded and ported to Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and now the iPhone. Epocrates Rx contains information on over 3,300 drugs, including their dosing, adverse effects, drug interactions, pricing, and pictures. This version also has several built-in medical calculations.
3. 
Medical Encyclopedia (University of Maryland Medical System) – This large medical reference available in both English and Spanish includes over 50,000 pages of in-depth information on symptoms, injury, disease, and surgery. Beef up your fund of knowledge or look up information while on rounds.
4. 
MedCalc (Mathias Tschopp & Pascal Pfiffner) – No smartphone used by physicians would be complete without a medical calculator. MedCalc offers a “very large selection of formulas and scores” in 4 languages (English, French, German, and Spanish). There is also support for SI and US units.
5. 
EyeChart (Dok LLC) – This portable Snellen Eye Chart is simple in design and use, but would be invaluable for a quick-and-dirty assessment of a patient’s visual acuity request an ophthalmology consult.
6. 
BLACKBAG (Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals) – The app is a medical news and video aggregator for nearly 40 specialties and categories. The function replicates the medical feeds found in the Medscape app, but the choices of news articles are slightly less technical without sacrificing clinical relevance. This may or may not be a feature, depending on the user. The user interface also looks more elegant, but lacks the ability to save or e-mail articles of interest.
7. 
ACC Pocket Guidelines (Skyscape) – This reference includes a portable version of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA) Practice Guidelines, including standard practices for the management of cardiac patients, use of cardiac imaging modalities, perioperative cardiovascular evaluation for noncardiac surgery, and other related topics.
8. 
STAT Cardiac Clearance (Austin Physician Productivity) – The cardiovascular evaluation of patients undergoing noncardiac surgery is described in the ACC/AHA Practice Guidelines. This app compresses the information into a quick-access algorithm for perioperative assessment of a patient’s appropriateness for noncardiac surgery.
9. 
PEPID (PEPID) – This robust toxicology reference provides information on the management of diverse toxicology emergencies, such as drug/chemical ingestion, gas inhalation, occupational exposures, and food allergies. It also includes a comprehensive antidote reference, toxicology-specific lab profiles, and poisonous plant images. This app may be of higher yield in the emergency department than on the wards, but the inpatient teams will eventually be responsible for affected patients once they get admitted.
10. 
STAT Insulin DM2 (Austin Physician Productivity) – The app applies the 2006 consensus algorithm developed by the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) for the initiation and adjustment of antiglycemic therapy in type 2 diabetes.
As mentioned earlier, there are many other outstanding apps not included in this list due to lack of space. With a vigorously active software development for the iPhone, coupled with medicine’s embrace of emerging technologies, this list will undoubtedly evolve over time. If you have any suggestions or beefs about any medical apps for the wards, feel free to leave me a note. We hope you find this list helpful for your education and work, and we look forward to seeing you with the next edition of the On The Wards top 10.
For a growing non-exhaustive list of iPhone medical apps, also check out our Squidoo lens.
The “New & Interesting” series is a biweekly compilation of select research findings, news articles, and random tidbits in bullet-point format. The entries are highly abbreviated, but provide links to the original articles or abstracts if you desire to read further.
