Now that pretty much everyone on the ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ team has an iPhone (some of us more belatedly than others) its time to throw out a few of our favourite Apps… In no particular order. Some more obvious than others. Some more medical than others! Most are free or nearly free as I’m a cheapskate. I’ve tried to put stuff on here that you’re actually likely to use fairly commonly, rather than stuff you’ll just show off to your friends. We look forward to hearing some of your suggestions.
Fed up with everyone’s phone giving off the same ‘Marimba‘ tone in your staff meetings?! – Here’s how to make your own ringtone.
Medcalc (Free) – I especially like the ‘Infusion management’ calculator and the ‘Paeds resusciation doses’ functions.
Medcalc
Epocrates (Free) – Salient drug information, interaction checker and pill identifier. Chris thinks this is crap, but I actually use it more than most of the other medical apps on my iphone. Other very similar free applications include Skyscape and Medscape. Chris prefers Frank Shann’s legendary Drugdoses @ $23.99.
epocrates
Eye Handbook (Free) – This is very impressive – full of great pictures and diagrams useful for patient (and doctor) education.
Eye Handbook
Brain exercise with Dr Kawashima ($5.99) – virtually the same game that some people (eg: my mother-in-law) buy a Nintendo DS for.
Brain exercise
Free Translator (free!)- Could be your only means of communication in a time-critical situation. I remember a Japanese tourist as soon as I entered the cubicle dropped her pants and pointed her bum at me while at the same time handing me an electronic translator – I was tempted to find out what the Japanese for ‘Arse’ was…
Evernote (Free)- A portable brain sync-able between computers. Revolutionary + possibly evolutionary.
Evernote
Eponyms (Free student version)- never be stumped by Marchiafava-Bignami syndrome again…
EyeChart (Free) – test visual acuity – seriously, how many of your ED cubicles has an acuity chart?
FileApp (Free) – put your pdfs, office or iwork documents on your iphone.
Bump (Free)- transfer info from iphone to iphone.
Gorillacam (free) – fantastic camera app that includes a spirit level, timer and ’3 shot burst’ functions.
Shazam (free) – one of our team once won a prize on a toxicology podcast thanks to this nifty app’s ability to identify songs out of thin air…
Appsaurus ($1.19) – Stumbleupon for the >100,000 apps in the store. Love it.
appsaurus
Shotgun (Free) – Immediate stress relief! Please resist the temptation to use it on psych patients (or your consultants…). Rivaled only by POW (also free).
shotgun
For a much more in-depth look at strictly medical iphone apps have a look here and here.
For the beginning of the Apple backlash check this out.
About Peter Allely
OK, crap is a bit harsh (totally out of character I know).
After all, epocrates Pill ID is very cool. It’s just that I prefer Antipodean sources for my drug information -- those Yanks can’t be trusted you know
. And if you need to use an interaction checker its probably time time to start crossing off a few of your patients medications…
I get my doses from Frank Shann, and if he can’t help me I’ll turn to the Australian Medicines Handbook or Therapeutic Guidelines for more detail (this involves using one of the big computers at work). There are expensive handheld and mobile versions of AMH out now (https://www.amh.net.au/index.php?page=product_list) but I haven’t used them.
Finally, I don’t actually use the DrugDoses iphone app -- it is way over-priced! -- I still use the good old slimline booklet version for about $10-15.
Cheers,
Chris
Chris
You can also get the miniTG for iPhone (http://www.tg.com.au/index.php?sectionid=200), although you also need iSilo to use it. It’s fairly expensive compared to most iPhone software though. I’ve used it on PocketPC (paid for by work) and its very similar to the paper version (I actually prefer it to the online system).
CJ