by Jay Luxenberg, MD

When deciding which app to write about, I tend to look at my iPad and iPhone and see which apps I’ve migrated to more prominent positions such as my “home page” to make access easier. I noticed I have two similar apps on my iPad, Read by QxMD and docwise (with capitalization or lack thereof as the apps authors use). Both are apps that provide a customized subset of recent papers in medical and scientific journals for me to browse in an interface reminiscent of reading an illustrated magazine. I’ve been using Read by QxMD longer, but clearly I like docwise better as it has migrated to my home page and I check it almost daily. Both offer a nice selection of the journals I prefer to follow. Read by QxMD does offer more journal support, including JAMDA. Both allow me to pick topics I am interested in and particular journals, and then they produce a magazine-like interface with recent articles that I can browse. I prefer the interface of docwise, which is clean, pleasant to manipulate and relatively straight-forward to navigate. Docwise also nicely integrates medical news sources that match my stated interests, including sources like FDA Medwatch that I should keep up with. Both apps smoothly integrate with my university VPN access and my personal subscription information to allow me to download full texts as pdfs. It stores articles offline, so I can catch up on reading while on planes or away from Internet access. I have to admit to being too grumpy for much social networking, but apparently it does integrate with common social networks in case you want to share an interesting article with your Facebook friends. It’s hard for me to put a finger on why I prefer one to the other, and I do keep both on my iPad, so perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to experiment with both as well to decide which interface you like best. The price is right, as both are free. Read by QxMD is reportedly planning of adding premium features for a charge in the future, and docwise reportedly will have advertising, but for now I don’t detect any obvious commercial influence. CME2 credit is offered, and CME1 is offered after questions are answered in docwise. Read by QxMD works on the iPhone, and reportedly docwise is also working on an iPhone app. Neither is yet available on Android platforms.

I think the general concept of personalized medical journal and news reading apps is wonderful, simply by making it more likely I will read an article or two instead of playing a game. The category seems to be rapidly growing and each app has been frequently updated with new features. I think they represent another way that tablet computing is changing our practice of medicine for the better.