Useful Smartphone Apps for Long Term Care

by Jay Luxenberg, MD

It’s been a while since the WAVE featured an update on useful smartphone apps for the long-term care provider. Here are three that I have found useful recently. 

The Medical Board of California recently launched a very useful app for those of us who need to look up physicians and their license status. I usually use their website for this, but the app is very easy to use and even lets you set up a list (e.g. your medical staff) to get notification of any changes in status. It also works on the iPad. It is currently only available on the IOS platform but reportedly an Android version will be launched next year. They also have produced a video with instructions on how to use the app, although WAVE readers are unlikely to need that help.

The American College of Physicians (ACP) publishes many guidelines for important medical conditions, and their app offers a great way to have them all in one easy to access place, and it identifies those guidelines that are no longer current. It is available for IOS and from Google Play store.

The sad truth is that in the past year or so there has been a resurgence of active TB cases. It is a challenge to keep up with the latest recommendations on identifying latent TB, treatment of active TB, and treatment of contacts. Luckily our county departments of public health are a wonderful resource, but I also have found the recently launched (2018) World Health Organization Compendium on TB very useful. The WHO Compendium app is available for IOS and Android. It is well organized and easy to use, although the links to pdfs may provide documents with fonts too small to easily read. For that reason, the version formatted for the iPad is even easier to use. It is very, very up to date.

The WAVE welcomes your suggestions about apps that you find helpful in meeting our goals of improving care for our patients that require post-acute and long-term care.

Want to discuss this article in the CALTCM Blog?   Click here now!