Get More Out of Your Smart Phone

Choose from references, testing and patient education apps.

By Erin Murphy, Contributing Editor

Medical apps offer new ways to help you work outside the clinical setting, put answers at your fingertips and support patient education. Unless you spend most of your time behind a desk, you should find at least some of these apps beneficial.

■ Screening tools: Optimal vision screening isn't always possible in the field but your smart phone makes screening possible in the field or at bedside.

EyeChart RandomEyes features randomized Snellen visual acuity testing, while Fast Acuity Lite has interactive, randomized letter testing for adults and shape tests for young children. The Color Blind Test app is self-explanatory. If you're looking for an Amsler grid, Amsler Vision and MaculaTester put it in the palm of your hand. The EyeXam app combines color perception, astigmatism and eye dominance tests. If you want tests that are larger than your smart phone, many screening apps are also available for the iPad, while others, such as Eye Chart Premium, are for use on the iPad only.

To bridge language barriers, try apps such as Medical Spanish, Pocket Medical Spanish, Medical French or Medical Translator (available in English, Spanish, Italian, French and German).

■ Patient education: Your smart phone is a great tool for helping patients visualize the structure and pathology of their eyes. Try anatomy apps such as Grays Anatomy, Netters Anatomy, the Wills Eye Manual and Blausen Human Atlas (or Blausen Human Atlas HD for the iPad).

Some apps are designed to help patients and families better understand health conditions. For example, the Glaucoma Handbook helps patients sort through the myths and facts about glaucoma.

■ Calculators: There are literally hundreds of calculator apps for MDs. Mediquations and MedCalc offer numerous medical scoring tools and calculations.

Ophthalmology calculators include the Optics Clinical Calculator app with nine calculators for prescribing lenses, the Astigmaster surgically induced astigmatism vector calculator app, and glaucoma risk calculator apps for patients with untreated ocular hypertension, such as P.R.E.D.I.C.T., Glaucoma Calc and OHT Calc.

■ Drug references: Today's drug reference apps are very polished and continually updated, with choices such as Medscape, Epocrates, DrugGuide (Davis's Drug Guide) and iPharmacy. For generic drug info, the Generics app tells you what's available from national pharmacy chains.

■ Research: You need the latest medical news and research. To make it easier, the MedPage Today Mobile app has daily coverage of 30 specialties, including ophthalmology. You can check clinical trials with the Drug Trials and Clinical Trials apps. PubMed On Tap brings you all the PubMed content, while Papers lets you search ACM, NASA-ADS, arXiv, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, JSTOR, Pubmed, and Web of Science, read articles, make notes and store the PDFs in your own library.

■ Billing and coding: For MDs and staffers alike, there are coding apps such as Stat E&M Coder, E/M Code Check and EM Coding, STAT ICD-9 Coder, ICD9 Consult and ICDMeister 2010. nMD