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Need to peer-review medical applications for smart phones
Benjamin J Visser*⇓ and Arthur W G Buijink†
+ Author Affiliations
*Department of Internal Medicine, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
†Department of Neurology, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Correspondence: Benjamin J Visser, Department of Internal Medicine, Academic Medical Centre, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Fax: +31 20 566 3593; Email: b.j.visser@amc.uva.nl)
Increasing numbers of medical practitioners and medical students are using smart phones and their associated applications (apps) as a source of reference material in daily clinical care. There are many different kinds of apps, e.g. for looking up reference values, making a differential diagnosis and performing useful calculations; there are whole libraries of textbooks integrated into a single app. These medical apps have a great potential for improving practice by providing a quick, comprehensive and up-to-date overview of current clinical guidelines, which could aid clinical decision-making and change the way that health care is delivered in the future.1 However, in our experience it is quite difficult to find a useful medical app in most app stores, with currently a chaotic hodgepodge of almost 17,000 applications.
Based on our experience in the use of medical apps we believe that few apps are reliable or potentially useful to health-care professionals, and most are not evidence-based, irrelevant, trivial or even downright dangerous.
read more: http://jtt.rsmjournals.com/content/18/2/124.full
April 2012, 18 (3)
thanks to Judith
Benjamin J Visser*⇓ and Arthur W G Buijink†
+ Author Affiliations
*Department of Internal Medicine, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
†Department of Neurology, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Correspondence: Benjamin J Visser, Department of Internal Medicine, Academic Medical Centre, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Fax: +31 20 566 3593; Email: b.j.visser@amc.uva.nl)
Increasing numbers of medical practitioners and medical students are using smart phones and their associated applications (apps) as a source of reference material in daily clinical care. There are many different kinds of apps, e.g. for looking up reference values, making a differential diagnosis and performing useful calculations; there are whole libraries of textbooks integrated into a single app. These medical apps have a great potential for improving practice by providing a quick, comprehensive and up-to-date overview of current clinical guidelines, which could aid clinical decision-making and change the way that health care is delivered in the future.1 However, in our experience it is quite difficult to find a useful medical app in most app stores, with currently a chaotic hodgepodge of almost 17,000 applications.
Based on our experience in the use of medical apps we believe that few apps are reliable or potentially useful to health-care professionals, and most are not evidence-based, irrelevant, trivial or even downright dangerous.
read more: http://jtt.rsmjournals.com/content/18/2/124.full
April 2012, 18 (3)
thanks to Judith