As
technology changes, so does the way doctors use it to treat their
patients. In recent years, more and more
doctors have been turning to smartphone apps.
A recent interview with doctors across the nation show that app use has
become almost routine now, and almost all doctors have smartphones these
days. In fact, many of these medical
apps can also be installed by patients and used to provide their physicians
with more data to assist in diagnoses.
The Range of Apps
There
are a huge number of apps now available in the medical industries. A number of these apps replace other tools,
creating a virtual Swiss Army knife for doctors and making it much easier for
them to do their jobs. Some of these
apps are purely informative, such as databases that list diseases, viruses, and
drug interactions. Others actually
replace different diagnoses equipment like asthma, blood pressure, or glucose
meters. On the patient end, many apps
are available to help them manage long-term diseases. There are basic medication reminders and
databases of symptoms, of course, but there are also apps that actually send
information back to a patient’s physician, allowing them to see exactly how a
patient is doing even when they are away from the office.
A Few Popular Apps
If you
are a new physician and are not sure what apps might be useful, or if you have
your own practice and are upgrading, here are a few of the most popular apps
that have become mainstays of any physician.
Clinicam – one of the earliest uses of
smartphones was to take pictures of a patient’s wound, rash, or other visual
indication of their condition and then upload it to their electronic health
record. However, some doctors were not
always good about deleting the photos from their phones, which could lead to a
privacy violation. With clinicam, the
photos are sent to the patient’s record without ever being stored on the phone,
removing any chance of a patient-doctor confidentiality breach.
Breast Cancer Diagnosis Guide – this is
a great app for patients struggling with breast cancer. It allows them to keep track of their
treatments, disease progression, and more.
It was developed by the founder of Breastcancer.org, a website aimed at
helping women deal with the often-overwhelming amount of information, appointments,
and treatment options associated with breast cancer.
Alivecor – this app, when coupled with
a small monitor, turns a smartphone into a portable heart monitor that patients
can use anywhere. They just attach the
monitor, open the app, and place their fingers on the sensors. The phone creates an EKG of their heart
rate. This app is very helpful for
doctors who have patients with irregular heart rhythms.
iHealth Wireless Pulse Oximeter –
another app that requires a separate sensor to operate, the iHealth monitor
will record a patient’s blood-oxygen level while they sleep. This helps their physician determine if they
have sleep apnea. The sensor fits around
the patient’s finger, so it is fairly unobtrusive. Many physicians have said that this and
similar apps may actually be better than a sleep study in determining if
patients do suffer from sleep apnea.
