How Mobile Apps Improve Quality of Care

What certification should providers seek to ensure that the app they use to make critical decisions about patients is the best? Some professional societies let members test apps and then post those results on their websites. Some physicians have taken the vetting process into their own hands.

Felasfa M Wodajo, MD, a surgeon specializing in cancers of the bone and soft tissue tumors, is senior editor of imedicalapps.com, founded to provide mobile app reviews and commentary. He and his colleagues “are getting multiple requests to review apps.”

Wodajo says that certainly for some providers who adopt medical apps for mobile use, the purpose is to have more continuous access to information or to save time, if the apps in fact really do that. But Wodajo says the most important use for these apps is to bridge the disconnect between information and care.