Medical-related apps for the iPhone

With the news that health insurance company Aetna purchased Healthagen, the company responsible for the number one mobile health app on the iPhone, iTriage, it got me thinking about the best medical related iPhone apps available. I’ve spent a good amount of time in and out of hospitals over the past month, but haven’t relied very much on my iPhone, as I try my very best not to self-diagnose and leave that work to the experts. Still, it can’t hurt to be better informed, so here are a few of the best medical apps available right now.

iTriage (Free)

Don’t expect the number one mobile health app to lose any of its great features now that it’s been acquired by Aetna. iTriage still boasts a robust feature set including a symptom manager that will diagnose your illness, maps and directions to nearby healthcare facilities, and a wait times for select hospital ERs and Urgent Care locations. With this app, users can diagnose themselves, locate excellent facilities near their location and then see how long the wait will be if they decide to go in. Putting that kind of power in the patient’s hands is a big part of what makes iTriage an app worth using if you often find yourself sick.

Skyscape Medical Resources (Free)

If you need to quickly look up a prescription drug and find out the proper dosage to take, Skyscape Medical Resources would be a handy app to have around. That feature comes free with the medical app, along with information on clinical information on hundreds of diseases so you can do a little legwork when trying to figure out what’s making you feel so rotten. The app also has a few additional premium features that range in price from $9.99 all the way up to $89.99. These include live, five-minute clinical consultations, a drug guide for nurses, and Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy.

Pediatric SymptomMD ($2.99)

It can be hard enough to figure out what’s wrong with you when you’re the adult explaining your symptoms, so doing so for a child who can’t even properly verbalize the issues they’re having can be a nightmare. Pediatric SymptomMD attempts to help out worried parents by providing parents with symptom care guides for a number of pediatric illnesses. Within the care guides provided by the app are definitions that describe the focus of the care, a decision chart helping parents know whether they need to go to an ER or other facility and additional home care advice.

Quick Medical Terminology and Abbreviation Reference ($0.99)

If the only thing you understand when it comes to medical terminology is how to rate your pain on a scale of 1-10, Quick Medical Terminology and Abbreviation Reference might be a necessity on your next hospital visit. The app has a two-way search that lets you look up terms by definition and definitions by the term, so the next time your doctor starts talking way over your head, you can stop them for a second while you hunt down exactly what it is they’re talking about. You can even enter your own terms in case the doctor says something that the app doesn’t cover.

Prognosis (Free)

Using Prognosis is kind of like playing fantasy doctor. The app presents a simple case description and it’s up to you to provide the basic course of treatment. This won’t be beneficial in any way to you if you’re already sick, but if you want to try to educate yourself on the way doctors are trained to diagnose you, it could be an interesting tool. As a fantasy sports nut, I find the idea of trying my hand at very minor doctoring quite interesting.

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