In this day and age, technology has become the backbone of success as far as the business world is concerned. Whether you’re a professional service provider or you operate a retail business, you just have to embrace technology in one or all of your departments if at all you want to see your business at a higher level in the next few months or years to come. And needless to mention, the consumer of today is an avid user of technology, especially since the arrival of computers, the internet, and smart gadgets.
Now, as a professional in the medical field, nothing is more important than seeing to it that you see your patients on time or attention to the medical needs of all of your clients in an organized, convenient, prompt, and professional manner. As a matter of fact, it is highly likely that you took a signed oath to always ensure that your patient’s interests always come first, especially if you’re a doctor. The success of your practice will also depend on the productivity of your office. In other words, the output, efficiency, and effectiveness of your office will largely determine how well you serve your clients and ultimately, the heights to which your practice manages to grow.
Forgive the long introduction, but truly, there are pieces of modern technology that you can’t afford to do without these days. Forget Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and the like. There are apps that you should already know about by now, at least if you’re from the current generation and you know a bit about smartphones. Without further ado, here are some productivity apps professionals in the medical field will be grateful for, as they make their lives easier and allow them to provide better healthcare to their patients.
Epocrates
Available on both Android and iOS operating platforms, Epocrates is a highly versatile app that medical field professionals from various departments will gladly appreciate. It comes with quite a number of features, including clinical information on diagnosis, drugs, diseases, and patient information. The app is initially free to download and use, but to use premium features, one has to part with a good $174 annually. There is also an online version that you can access through your phone, tab, or computer for similar information.
Other features include access to medical insurance formularies, patient-specific recommendation guidelines, and drug interaction information, just to mention a few. The app can also give you the identity of a pill that your patient has been taking, in case you’re dealing with a situation where your patient lacks knowledge as well as a clear medical history of such medication. You only need to enter a couple of the drugs’ physical characteristics and the app gives you several possibilities of what the drug could be.
Appointment Scheduler/Reminder Apps
Nothing is more important to a medical practitioner than appointments with their patients. Whether you’re a general doctor, a pediatrician, a dermatologist, a cardiologist, a dentist, or a pharmacist, a missed appointment could mean one of a few things. It could mean that:
- Your patient simply forgot but is in good health
- Your patient went to another health facility
- The patient succumbed to their health condition and couldn’t manage to attend
- And a whole lot other possibilities
In addition to the above scenarios, mismanaged appointment schedules could all eat into your revenues. Every no-show or missed appointment will have a huge impact on your practice, which is why experts at GetWeave recommend using an appointment reminder to help you manage your schedule. A good appointment reminder will not only help you reduce the number of no-shows, if not eliminate them, but it will also see that your practice propels higher and moves forward, at the same time boosting your office’s profits.
Depending on which one you go for, appointment reminders come with a wide array of features. The most basic among these features is that the reminder can be set to send an alert to you as well as your patient at regular intervals before the time of your meeting. Others that come with appointment scheduler functionality also allow you to sync your online appointment calendar with other calendars that you regularly use, so you can track your schedule anytime, anywhere from whichever calendar. What’s more, the calendar will also display important patient information, so you’re well informed and you can get adequately prepared before meeting your patient.
Human Anatomy Atlas
This is another great app for those studying medicine. You will find that as a medical student, you’re overly swamped with stuff to do, always moving up and down like the whole day. Human Anatomy Atlas is an app that contains a great wealth of information that can help you ace on your grades and improve your productivity in medical school. It comes with a variety of study options, including Muscle, Anatomy, Physiology, and Animation, just to mention a few. It also contains plenty of interactive diagrams as well as questions and answers to help sharpen your medical knowledge and get the most out of study time. What’s even more intriguing, it contains High-Res images of the anatomical structures of the human body. It also has a sliding feature, which allows the user to pick an organ, dissect it, and view it from various angles for a better interpretation and understanding. It also comes with a pronunciation feature for those difficult to pronounce Latin (scientific) words or terminology so you start sounding like a real medical professional as you study. The app is available at a small price of around $25 and also has a customized version (priced differently) that can be used in a classroom setting, allowing both the teacher and his students to gain access to the app.
CareZone
Last but not least, we have CareZone, a great app that any medical professional will appreciate. CareZone, which is free on the App Store, is simply an app that allows patients or individuals to enter their medical history, say medications, when they took them, dosage, what they were suffering from, and so on. With such information, medical professionals can better understand their patient’s past and current medical history for proper diagnosis, treatment, and prescription.
UpToDate
As a professional in the medical field, continuous learning is of huge essence. Also, it is important to keep up the pace with the current trends and developments in the medical field. As you can tell from the name, one app that helps you achieve just this is UpToDate. It provides you with such information, not forgetting that it can also act as a learning tool for patients. It comes to high-quality images and diagrams that caregivers can use to educate patients about the inner workings of the body. Healthcare professionals can also get resourceful information on certain diseases or certain medical issues that they’d like to explore deeper. It is also available in nine different languages. Even though it is free to download, however, you will part with a few hundred dollars to access its premium features.
In summary, technology has surely come to make our lives easier. Most of all, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of apps that are used in various industries by professionals to increase productivity and improve workflow. The above are just some of the various productivity apps medical professionals will be grateful for.
