1.  Gmooh! The Medical Reminder – $1.99

This app allows you to set up to 5 alerts per day.  Choose which days you want reminders for.  Pleasing graphic user interface.

2.  Pill Reminder Pro – $0.99

Not as many features but simple to use.  Cheaper.

3. Pill Time – $0.99

Write personal notes, hit a snooze button.  Log how many pills remaining so you can order a refill when necessary.

4.  MyMedSchedule Mobile – $1.99

Adds email and text message reminders so there’s more than one way to remind you about your pills.  Syncs with a website online for more ways to engage.

5.  Aspirin – The Pro Medication Tracker – $4.99

Integrates with Google Calendar.  Has pictures of the pills for easy visualization.  Can track other health markers such as blood pressure and blood sugars.  Can support more than one patient.

So far, it looks as though Number 5 is the best buy because of it’s more advanced features.  Which one do you use?

Epocrates has come out right at number 10.  It’s great to see the medical space being featured as innovative!

Your doctors may not have memorized dosage information, interactions, and side effects for every drug — but they don’t need to, thanks to Epocrates’s easy-to-use drug-reference program for mobiles and laptops. The program allows medical professionals to make smart prescribing decisions with the click of a button, and 45% of U.S. doctors have already signed on. “When they are in front of patients, they can get information in a split second,” says Rose Crane, the company’s CEO. Last year, Epocrates said that it’s developing a platform to give doctors access to patients’ electronic health records, supplying them with even more instant grist for making sound treatment recommendations.

To see the full Top 50, head over to Fast Company.

Essentially, I’m using this huge 23 inch desktop to add more and more medical apps to ScrubdIn while engaging with readers on Twitter. It’s been extremely fun and useful to use this computer. I really like how compact it is and it’s multi-touch features.

Stay tuned as Lenovo is giving away a free ThinkCentre m90 to one of my readers during a contest. More details to come! In the meantime, check out the video!

Description

Pharmaceuticals is a large and ever expanding field. There are always new drugs on the horizon for conditions we have not been able to treat or at least, treat as effectively and safely as we could. The amount of drugs on the market can be quite overwhelming and sifting through the dosing, interactions and side effects can be a daunting task. Micromedex Drug Information aims to solve that by serving as a drug directory.

Presentation

The app is presented in the native iOS user interface that makes it easily recognizable and accessible to anyone. There are no custom design choices here besides the change in menu color to a bright orange.

Design

Micromedex is a very lean app. There are really only two main categories to choose from when organizing medication: drug name and drug class. The drug names are ordered both by generic and brand name. Additionally, there is a dedicated search for either list.

Looking at the actual drugs or classes, Micromedex has chosen an extensive submenu system to make organize its information. Couple this with drug reference updates upon booting and you have an app that manages to stay current with all of the medications out there.

Functionality

In theory, the design should work. In practice, the design philosophy can slow down productivity: the updates are automatic upon starting the application; there is no multitasking or state-saving support in the app and there are also too many submenus to go through as it can sometimes take 4 or 5 touches to sift through every facet of a drug. While quick and specific information can be quickly spotted if you know where to look, this design is not friendly for scenarios in which you are totally unfamiliar with a medication.

Micromedex groups much of its information by the generic drug and not the dosage form or brand you have selected. The results in dosing regimens for a brand name tablet that includes the IV dosing of other formulations. While this may be helpful in choosing formulations in the generic, it seems somewhat out of place under specified formulations and can make finding the information you need more difficult than it needs to be.

The above caveats aside, the information that is presented is comprehensive but concise, including adult, pediatric, geriatric or other dosing adjustments and even off label uses so you can be certain that there is a mention of a bit of everything.

Conclusion

Micromedex is a comprehensive drug information reference with good ideas marred by cumbersome navigation that while not a deal breaker, does limit the app from universal use. In practice, it can excel as a fast fact-checking tool but less so for comprehensive reading on medications.

To see photos of the app, click here.

Reviewed by : Tom Tang

Tom is a medical student studying in British Columbia, Canada. He is an avid technophile and design enthusiast. Enjoying creativity and inspirational works, Tom maintains his interests in violin and piano in his free time. He currently writes about his journey through medicine on his blog.

I’m happy to announce his first contribution to the site is a review for Micromedex.  It’s a medical app with a database of drugs that rivals Epocrates, Medscape, and Tarascon Pharmacopoeia.

In the review, he goes over the app’s design, functionality, and overall experience.  To read the complete review, make sure to click here.

I’m excited to let you know that we are pushing along everyday at getting more and more medical apps filtered, categorized, and added to our database.

I’ve personally read through 1,600 medical apps and have queued about 650 to be added to ScrubdIn.  So stay tuned.

In other news, I’m excited to let you know that we have a contest on the way.  I can’t tell you the details yet.  But you don’t want to miss this.

In closing, thanks for tuning in to our site.  We are happy to hear any thoughts and comments you may have.  Please check out our site and write some reviews on any medical apps you’re familiar with.  We need input from you!

Fantastic. Useful. Strange. What?

Those were the words that came to mind as I walked down the aisles of the trade show’s Digital Health section.

iHealth and Withings were there. You may remember them from when we wrote about their newest inventions, a blood pressure cuff that attaches to the iPhone. Seeing the devices in person and trying them out really was exciting. It made me become hopeful for having a truly portable, good-looking, accurate device in my travel medical bag for house calls.

Among the useful were a slew of slim-lined fitness sensors based off of ANT+ technology, a small chip requiring ultra-low power to wirelessly network with applications. You could run, cycle, row and be able to record your cadence, power, speed, and heart rate in real time and then review the information on a mobile platform or website. Good for those who are into fitness and training.

One of the stranger things I saw was a booth that marketed a personal health record. However, the person running the booth was not a representative of the company, they were a sales-rep from a bluetooth technology company. They knew the bare basics of the program but were unable to answer any detailed questions. That was unfortunate.

And the one device that made me go, “What?” was a 1970′s looking trapezoidal box with rows of red circular buttons on it. It looked like the game, Whack a Mole except the red buttons you whack light up like the game Simon Says. The device was made to keep your brain stimulated using various “games” programmed in this very large trapezoid box. However, there were no visible directions and the representative was unable to articulate how to use the device. So I left the booth very confused.

All in all, I had a great time at the Consumer Electronics Show. I saw a ton of health gadgets. Some were great. Some missed the mark. It will be exciting to see whichproducts make it to mass market.

About the author:

Dr. Thuc Huynh is CEO of ScrubdIN, a startup company that aims to help health professionals choose their next medical app. Her main interest lies around how medicine can play a role with web 2.0 and social media. Dr. Huynh is currently Chief Resident at her Family Medicine Residency in Rapid City, SD and received her B.S. and M.D. at the Medical University of the Americas.

The iPhone is owned by millions of people nationwide.  Non-medical peripheral attachments are on the rise for the iPhone, such as the ability to accept mobile credit card payments by a simple swipe on your phone by Square and Verifone.

The iPad is already making its way into medical schools, hospitals, and operating rooms.  So why shouldn’t the iPhone be used in a doctor’s office?

Right now, there are 3 iPhone peripheral devices that will help doctors consolidate their medical bag of tools and provide point-of-care medicine for the patient.

By point-of-care medicine, I am referring to the ability to examine a patient wherever they need us to, right then and there.  No waiting for a technician, no wheeling the patient to an imaging department.  For example, at their home, their office, their football game, their nursing home, or even at our office, easily, and cheaply for the patient.

iPhone connected Blood Pressure Cuffs

Withings and iHealth have both created blood pressure cuffs that attach to the pins on the bottom of the iPhone.  Air rushes into the cuff to inflate it and the information is displayed elegantly on the iPhone’s screen.  Both cuffs come with it’s own medical app that you download for free from the iTunes store.  The app’s user interface has been designed beautifully which is very rare for the medical world.  Most medical user interfaces are reminiscent of the 1990′s Windows.

The iHealth and Withings apps will keep records of your blood pressure for you, graph your results over time, and teach you about what your results mean.

An ECG in the Palm of your Hands

AliveCor’s iPhone ECG has been a viral hit among the med-tech audience.  Imagine having the power of a big clunky machine in the palm of your hands.  All right, AliveCor’s iPhonECG is actually only one lead, not a big old 12-lead EKG machine.

But the neat thing about having a one lead ECG is the portability and convenience.  The device is actually a case that fits any iPhone.  On the back of the case are two electrodes that you can use either on a person’s chest or by having the patient hold their thumbs on the electrodes.

The device also has it’s own medical app available on the itunes store that will keep logs of your heart rhythm, heart rate, and sharing capabilities to keep your doctor informed of your health.  Watch out for this item.  It’s going to be grow big and fast.

Avoid skin cancer by keeping tabs on your moles

With all of the buzz about the iphone ECG and blood pressure cuffs, this extremely cool device passed us all by.

This is the Handyscope.  It is an external case with a dermatoscope that the iPhone slips into.  A dermatoscope is like a high resolution magnifying glass used to see skin lesions in greater detail which is highly important in the detection of skin cancer.  Using the pinch and spread technique, you can zoom in and out on a lesion to get better assess the lesion’s margins and consistency.

The device also has its own app in the itunes store which allows you to take pictures of your moles, keep a record of its progression, and email the photos to your doctor.  This device is the most expensive of all the iPhone medical peripherals at about $1500 US dollars.

What this means

We can expect more iPhone medical attachments in the future.  There’s just no denying how convenient it would be to consolidate medical tools into one operating system. And no, these devices are not going to be limited to the iPhone.  Android will be seeing this too.  Expansion, that’s the nature of business.  I’m looking forward to seeing what else gets created.  I haven’t seen an iphone pulse oximeter attachment yet.

We’ve looked at and read 1,080 medical apps listed in the iTunes store and determined that only half of that are worthy of your interest.  We are plugging away hard each day to get these apps up on our site and categorized appropriately.

As far as statistics go, in one week, the site has had :

• 284 unique visits.
• 1,894 pageviews
• 1.76% bounce rate

We are really excited at this and are looking forward to the site’s future.

Thank you for checking out our site and participating in discussions.  Cheers to a brand new week!

Are they?

I don’t think so.  3G Doctor doesn’t think so either and wrote an excellent point-by-point response on his blog here.

Be sure to read iMedicalApp’s response to 3G Doctor in the comments section here.  Great debates.

As for me, I’m a visual person and crave good-looking design with integration, convenience, and portability.  Iltifat Husain, founder of iMedicalApps suggested the Omron blood pressure cuff as a cheaper, better alternative for blood pressure monitoring. But it’s bulky, requires a USB connector, is not web-based meaning not accessible everywhere, and it’s software is cluttered and complex.  So I personally would not want that device but that’s because I’m a lover of modern design.

Of these three devices below, which one would you pick?