Anyone who works in health care is used to researching symptoms, drug interactions and other need-to-know stats to keep patients safe and manage their care. Until recently, doctors, nurses and other health care workers would have to wait until they got to a desktop terminal to find the answers they need—but today, there are medicine-specific apps that providers can use to access and share information right from a patient’s bedside.
“Only 15% of health apps are marketed to doctors,” says Brian Kalis, the Minneapolis-based managing director of Accenture’s digital health practice, citing the company’s own research. “We’ve found that the doctors we surveyed are looking for better functionality and easy data entry to improve quality care through technology. There’s a big need and challenge to improve usability and the clinician experience within the system.”
There may only be a handful of medical apps on the market today, but we’ve done our research to share the benefits of the most popular ones. Looking for an app to improve your practice? Start with these.
This medical reference app is seen as a must-have for many providers, and one that Kalis cites as marketed directly to providers. It includes information on drugs and drug interactions (and can analyze combinations of up to 30 medications at once), tips on how to identify pills by appearance, ICD-10 codes and secure text messaging to contact other providers for consultations and referrals.
Doximity
Kalis says there’s been an increase in high-tech offerings that connect physicians to other physicians. Doximity is a good example. It serves as a social networking app for doctors, making it possible to search for and communicate with other doctors across the country. Physicians use Doximity to network with other clinicians, send and receive HIPAA-secure faxes to authorize medications, and earn credits by reading medical journals.
Figure 1
This app allows clinicians to get second opinions and clinical advice and to share medical knowledge, Kalis says. It’s especially designed for sharing images without identifying information, so clinicians can look at and comment on actual cases to learn more about different conditions. Multiple levels of moderation ensure that images are anonymized, but even if your employer prohibits photographing patients, the app is a handy tool that can help you learn from other clinicians.
I.V. Drug Handbook
This app provides information about injection techniques and requirements, says Cathy Reisenwitz, editor of the medical technology blog at Capterra, a business software advisory firm in Arlington, Virginia. Especially helpful for nurses, the app makes it easy to look up requirements for more than 350 intravenous drugs, as well as up-to-date FDA warnings, guidelines for administration, monitoring recommendations and more.
Omnio
Providers can use Omnio to expand their knowledge base, says Kunal Jain, co-founder, president and CEO of Clearwater, Florida-based PracticeForces, which provides medical billing services. The app provides physicians, nurses and other clinicians with access to resource materials across a wide spectrum of practices, including allergy, geriatrics, orthopedics, sports medicine and veterinary medicine. Omnio also offers a drug guide and calculators, an interaction analyzer, information about symptoms and pill identification, as well as a news feed offering the latest in medical information.
[Source:- Linkon Journal Star]
