Being a medical student today is no easy feat. There’s a great deal of information to learn, remember, and utilize, all while trying to maintain a well-balanced life.
From study help, wellness guides, and time management tools, this list of 10 apps is sure to positively impact your time throughout medical school. Check out our list of apps to download!
Brainscape is a flashcard-based web and mobile app for serious learners who need to quickly learn, understand, and memorize large amounts of information. This app has a vast collection of medical flashcards, for hundreds of popular subject areas in the field of medicine and healthcare. Brainscape’s online flashcards optimize your study time by repeating difficult concepts in the perfect interval for maximum memory retention. The platform uses a strategy called spaced repetition – the process in which new or difficult concepts are studied more frequently than easier known concepts – thereby perpetually challenging you on your weakest areas of knowledge.
Features:
- Medical flashcards
- Spaced repetition
- Curated by top educators and students in medicine
Price: Completely FREE
Anki is another popular adaptive flashcard app used by many medical students. Anki is a program which makes remembering things easy and is more efficient than traditional study methods. You can either greatly decrease your time spent studying, or greatly increase the amount you learn. The app also uses the spaced repetition strategy, which involves reviewing material at gradually increasing intervals. Anki uses an algorithm to automatically schedule flashcard reviews based on individual performance. When you review a flashcard in Anki, you’ll rate your understanding of the content on a scale of 1-4. Based on this rating, Anki will calculate the optimal time for your next review of that card.
Features:
- Memory retention
- Efficient learning
- Customizable flashcards
- Progress tracking
Price: Online platform is free/mobile app is $25.00
In 2005, Dr. Graham Walker was inspired to start MDCalc while in medical school. He realized that memorizing esoteric criteria, scores, and equations – instead of focusing on patient care – was a poor use of a physician’s time, energy, and brainpower. Being a physician requires you to be fluent in a spectrum of formulas and equations, which is where MDCalc makes life easier. Their evidence-based tools and content written by physician experts support 50+ specialties and cover 200+ patient conditions. The app contains 500+ medical formulas you’ll need for making good decisions and recommendations for patient care in the clinical environment. From pregnancy wheels, dermatome maps, and dosage calculators to eye charts and growth velocity, MDCalc is the go-to clinical decision tool.
Features:
- Robust search filter
- Expert content (i.e., when to use this calculator, what is the evidence behind this calculator, what should I do next, etc.)
- Creator insights
- Customizations features
Price: Completely FREE
Prognosis is a tool for practicing your diagnostic and decision-making skills by using real clinical cases. Within the app, users can select a case, make their diagnosis, and then check it against the official peer-reviewed diagnosis. The case information provided includes diagnostic reasoning, test results, and key learning points. The app allows you to improve your ability to diagnose and manage key clinical presentations associated with a disease. The app also gives you access to relevant facts and succinct explanations behind the underlying diagnostic and management rationale. Prognosis is designed for practicing physicians, medical students, nursing professionals and other healthcare practitioners who love medicine and want to thrive as world-class decision-makers.
Features:
- Practice decision-making with clinical cases
- Learn valuable lessons from unique cases
- Cases written by 200+ physicians, spanning 22 specialties
Price: Completely FREE
Comprehending drug interactions is an essential prerequisite for completing medical school and ensuring the safe practice of medicine. The pharmacology-focused free edition of Epocrates offers an impressive drug interaction checker which enables users to assess potentially harmful interactions among a maximum of 30 brands, generic, over-the-counter (OTC), or alternative drugs simultaneously. Additionally, the platform provides a pill identifier, allowing users to identify unknown pills based on their shape, colour, and imprint code. The app has also introduced a tool to identify superbugs in your patients’ communities and make more accurate point-of-care prescribing decisions to treat bacterial infections.
Features:
- Medical equations
- 600 dosing calculators
- Pill identifier
- Drug interaction checker
Price: Free for the basic platform – upgrades are available to provide further content at different costs.
Headspace makes mental health support accessible to everyone, no matter their background or experience. Headspace was founded by a former Buddhist monk with a degree in circus arts. Headspace is a vast store with tools to help you prioritize your wellness. Headspace is meditation made simple, teaching life-changing mindfulness skills in just a few minutes a day. Get happy. Be less stressed. Sleep soundly!
Features:
- Guided meditations
- Mindfulness exercises
- Strategies to help with sleeping, waking up, working out, focusing, relaxing, and more
Price: Completely FREE
One of the biggest obstacles to starting and keeping on track during a study session is phones. Phones are addictive, distracting, and a great way to derail your study time. The Forest app is a fun tool that helps you stay focused on your studies. When you want to focus, plant a tree, and your tree will grow while you focus on your work. However, leaving the app halfway will cause your tree to die. The more trees you have, the lusher and more gorgeous your forest becomes (and the more work you get done!).
Features:
- Helps you stay focused
- Keeps you aware of when you lose track
- Can help plant real trees with their partner organization, Trees for the Future
Price: $5.49 for IOS and Android
This unique app features a database of relevant clinical trials at your fingertips. The Journal Club Team reviews the top articles in internal medicine, putting landmark trials at your fingertips. Journal Club does the hard work reviewing the literature so that you can focus on what’s most important: caring for your patients. Search and sort by specialty, disease, and year to find study synopsis, major points, designs, populations and criticisms.
Features:
- Content is written by physicians
- Landmark medical trials
- Summaries and reviews of papers and articles
Price: $2.99 on all devices
Evernote gives you the ability to remember everything and tackle any project with your notes, tasks, and schedule all in one place. Use this free app to synchronize your class notes, web files and images across your computer, smartphone and tablet. Take a picture of research information, and the app will scan the photo, save the text and make it searchable so you can find it later. Bring your notes, tasks, and schedules together to get things done more effectively.
Features:
- Organize class notes and information
- Syncs your notes automatically to your devices
- Adds texts, images, and audio to your notes
Price: $5.00 a month / $45.00 a year
MSD Manual believes that health information is a universal right and that every person is entitled to accurate, accessible and usable medical information. This useful medical reference app covers etiology, pathophysiology, and options for evaluation and treatment within all major medical and surgical specialties. The best part about the app is that the topics shared are written and updated regularly by 350+ academic physicians!
Features:
- Concise instructional videos
- Editorials are written by top medical experts
- Quizzes
- Interactive case simulations
- Medical News
Price: Completely FREE
As you continue to achieve success as a future physician, make sure to utilize helpful tools such as the apps listed above to enjoy your studies and maintain a happy balanced life! We hope these app suggestions positively impact your medical school journey.
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