First annual Medical Apps Awards: Vote now

The polls for the first annual Medical Apps Awards is now open. Voting closes April 21, 2011 @ 12:00 AM EST.

General instructions (you can win various prizes)
Go directly to the polls

There are 3 categories that you can vote on:

1. Best Medical App for Healthcare Professionals

MediBabble – a medical translation tool
Doximity – a professional networking tool
Medscape – comprehensive guide to drugs, interactions, diseases, & procedures
Epocrates – comprehensive guide to drugs, interactions, identifying pills, & calculators
DrChrono – the first EMR for the ipad

2. Best Medical App for Patients

iHealth BPM w/ cuff – the first medical app to take your blood pressure & keep track of it
Asthma Maze – know which food additives & cosmetic ingredients can trigger an asthma attack
Mayo Clinic Diabetes Type 2 Wellness Solutions – comprehensive guide to diabetes
Free RX iCard – get discounts on prescription drugs at participating pharmacies, easy locater
Calorie Tracker by Livestrong – keep track of your daily calories and weight loss progress

3. Most Innovative Medical App

Airstrip – monitor your patient’s vitals, waveforms, labs, I/Os, meds, & allergies from home
Webicina – a comprehensive online medical resource for both patients & healthcare folks
Fooducate – scan any barcode in the grocery store to instantly see product health highlights
PocketCPR w/cradle – real-time feedback so that anyone can do CPR correctly
Google Translate – speak into your phone and it will speak out the translation

I thought I would mention this since Medibabble was created by recent graduates from the UCSF School of Medicine. It’s a creative, well thought-out, free medical translation app. I had highlighted the app back in Feb 2011 and deserves to be on the list of impressive apps.

The downside of voting is that you are required to enter your email and snail-mail address in case you win the prize. Good luck to all the nominees!

I do not have any financial ties with any of these apps.

By Michelle Lin, MD|2026-06-16T16:03:10-07:00Apr 19, 2011|Social Media & Tech|

Article review: What’s wrong with self-guided learning?

There is a constant tug-of-war between self-guided learning and supervised learning. With the advances in technology for medical education such as asynchronous learning modules, simulation, there has been a movement away from traditional, instructor-led teaching and towards more independent, self-guided learning. There is less supervision of learning.
But left unsupervised, are learners learning the right things and doing so optimally? The authors, in this review, say yes and no.

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By Michelle Lin, MD|2016-11-11T18:58:01-08:00Apr 18, 2011|Education Articles, Medical Education|

Paucis Verbis: Dental trauma

How cool is this — I have talented emergency physicians contributing Paucis Verbis card content! This week features excellent pearls on Dental Trauma by Dr. Hans Rosenberg (University of Ottawa). Here’s his recent article in Annals of EM on reimplantation of avulsed teeth.¹

PV Card: Dental Trauma

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Go to ALiEM (PV) Cards for more resources.

Reference

Rosenberg H, Rosenberg H, Hickey M. Emergency management of a traumatic tooth avulsion. Ann Emerg Med. 2011;57(4):375-377. [PubMed]

By Michelle Lin, MD|2021-10-15T11:15:07-07:00Apr 15, 2011|ALiEM Cards, Dental|

Trick of the Trade: Oblique CXR to look for pneumothorax

Supine chest xrays have an extremely low sensitivity (12-24%) in detecting pneumothoraces. Because a pneumothorax layers anteriorly on an AP CXR film, the xray beam is perpendicular rather than tangential to the pneumothorax edge. This makes visualizing a small to moderate sized pneumothorax extremely difficult. So you are left to look for indirect signs such as a deep sulcus at the costophrenic angle or subcutaneous air. I’m often surprised at how large of a pneumothorax can be missed on CXR based on CT imaging. The image to the right shows a large left-sided pneumothorax on CT.

What if you have an equivocal bedside ultrasound result in looking for a pneumothorax, and the patient is too unstable to go to CT?

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By Michelle Lin, MD|2019-02-19T18:08:06-08:00Apr 13, 2011|Radiology, Tricks of the Trade|

Article Review: Medical education can learn from the neurobiology of learning

The brain is a mysterious thing. How do we learn?

Can we apply what we know about the neurobiology and sociology of learning towards medical education? This review article in Academic Medicine presents 10 strategies to improve teaching and curricular development.

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By Michelle Lin, MD|2016-11-11T18:58:04-08:00Apr 11, 2011|Education Articles, Medical Education|

Paucis Verbis: AMI and ECG Geography

Sometimes a picture is worth MORE than a 1000 words. Such is the case of the above illustration that I saw on the Life In The Fast Lane blog. When I first saw it, I knew that I immediately had to find out who made the graphic. It turns out it is the multitalented Dr. Tor Ercleve, who is an emergency physician at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and an established medical illustrator.

This graphic demonstrates the EKG findings for the various types of acute MI’s as broken down by coronary vascular anatomy (right coronary artery, left circumflex artery, left anterior descending artery). This detailed illustration won’t be readable in print form but is great in digital format on your mobile device.

Thanks, Tor!

[PDF]

Go to ALiEM (PV) Cards for more resources.

By Michelle Lin, MD|2021-10-15T11:17:43-07:00Apr 8, 2011|ALiEM Cards, Cardiovascular, ECG|

Trick of the Trade: Check pupillary constriction with ultrasound

In some trauma patients with head and face trauma, you will need to check their pupillary response to light. Severe periorbital and eyelid swelling, however, make this difficult. You want to minimize multiple attempts to retract the eyelids because of the risk of a ruptured globe. What’s a minimally painful and traumatic way to check for pupillary constriction?