by Jay Luxenberg, MD

I’ve previously been concentrating on general medical apps or those specific to geriatric medicine. This article will highlight some dandy apps that are disease specific, but still very pertinent for those of us caring for elderly patients.

Heart Failure Trials is an app for the iPhone/iPad or android operating systems. The cost is nada, zilch, nothing – it is free! It is truly amazing – a comprehensive review of every major clinical trial of drug or device therapy for acute and chronic heart failure. It provides the reference, of course, but I appreciate the succinct summaries of the important points of the trial, the design, inclusion and exclusion criteria, size and follow-up data, primary and secondary outcomes, and best of all the associated guidelines that are based on the trial. Just click on a button and it sends you to Pubmed where you can track down the paper itself if you need it. I have to say this is one of the most elegant and easy to use apps I have used. Heart Failure Trials was designed and written by David Majure, MD MPH, a heart failure cardiologist trained at the University of California, San Francisco and The Johns Hopkins Hospital and he deserves a hearty thanks for the effort.

Another app I have been appreciating comes from Europe, and is a compendium of liver diseases with in depth information on symptoms, physical findings and signs, clinical course, diagnosis including differential diagnosis, management and therapy. It is like having an easy to search textbook on your phone. iLiver is free, and is currently only available for the iPhone. It is developed by the European Association for the Study of the Liver. Info is here: http://www.iliver.eu/  I did not have any trouble with its European origins – I couldn’t even find a reference to Mal de foie.

Please remember to share any useful medical related apps – there are so many out there that it will take a village to find and evaluate them all!