4 useful apps for emergency physicians

As doctors in all parts of the hospital, including the emergency department, rely increasingly on digital tools, more mobile apps for a variety of treatment options are flooding the market—some of which tackle issues one might not expect.

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Iltifat Husain, M.D., a former emergency physician and CEO of Decision Point Informatics, compiled for Medpage Today and iMedicalApps.com a list of apps that docs in the ER should try for issues ranging from prescription discounts for patients to gout diagnoses and virtual surgery simulators.

Here’s a look at a few of the apps that made his list of “not-so-obvious” choices:

• SonoSupport: This application is available for the iPhone and provides a reference guide for performing ultrasounds, according to Husain. The app includes information on both common ultrasound techniques and some of the more rare options.
• STD Tx Guide: This app, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updates automatically when the CDC makes adjustments to its treatment guidelines and includes suggestions for antibiotic alternatives for patients allergic to penicillin. The CDC has developed a number of similar tools, which are available for free, according to Husain.
• Making Healthy Choices: Developed by Consumer Reports, this tool is designed to help answer patient questions about why certain treatments weren’t prescribed or selected. It can help navigate conversations about wasteful testing, and why docs are trying to avoid it.

• Diagnosaurus DDX: Emergency physicians often have to make decisions on the fly, so this app is designed to streamline the diagnosis process. Doctors can search more than 1,000 different diagnoses by a variety of metrics, including organ type, symptom or disease, according to its Apple Store page.