25 Essential iPad Apps for Your Health and Wellness

The iPad is here, and the medical community is seeking a way to make this tool work for physicians, nurses and students. Fortunately, if you already use apps on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you may be able to sync them to iPad from your Mac or PC. The apps run in their original size or you can expand them to fill the iPad screen. In addition, this list of 25 essential iPad apps for health and wellness may help you fill in the app gap.

While many apps for the iPhone or iPod Touch were free, new apps on the market for iPad may cost a dollar or a few hundred dollars — especially those designed for the medical profession. The list below, therefore, is categorized by price so you can learn more about what is available. Some apps also are designed for patient use to learn more about preventative medicine and a healthy lifestyle.

Patients, physicians, nurses and students can view all the medical apps available for download for the iPad at iTunes, as well as through a search on any search engine for “medical apps.” Be sure to check in the left column of each app under “requirements” at iTunes to learn whether the app is available for your iPad.

Free iPad Medical Apps

1. AirStrip OBSERVER Suite: These apps represent the next era of patient monitors for physicians. AirStrip OB is already FDA cleared and the other applications in the suite are in advanced stages of development. Download trials for some apps in the suite are free, and this app may become hospital subscriptions in the future.
2. Brain Tutor 3D: Learn about the structure and function of the human brain by interacting with rotatable 3D models in real-time.
3. Calculate (Medical Calculator): This app highlights tools that are useful in clinical practice and that serve to impact diagnosis, treatment or determining prognosis.
4. Free Primal Anatomy Quiz: Free quiz for self-testing, comes with over 100 questions on three body systems — respiratory, cardiovascular and digestive.
5. Medical Encyclopedia: This app contains 50,000 pages of information that has been reviewed by medical professionals and that is updated regularly.
6. Monthly Prescribing Reference (MPR): This app provides concise prescription and OTC drug information, side effects and interactions for medical professionals and patients.
7. PEPID Flashcards: This app offers free and expanded study tools for medical and nursing students. Another free app includes PEPID, which offers free and platinum clinical decision-support information and tools for doctors, nurses, emergency medical teams, and students.
8. PubSearch: PubSearch is a fast, efficient search tool for scientists, medical professionals and students who rely on the millions of research papers indexed in PubMed.
9. Symptom Checker .MD: Enter a symptom or disease in the search box and results provide clinical medical information matched to the local doctors who can treat that symptom or condition.
10. X-rays: A vast selection of X-rays of the human body for study on abnormalities, fractures and more.

iPad Medical Apps under $10

11. Carter’s Encyclopedia of Health and Medical: The app should be detailed enough to cover all the information a nurse or paramedic is ever likely to need.
12. Instant ECG: Comprehensive Electrocardiogram app with over 90 high resolution ECG examples. This app also contains 30 high-definition full screen movies (without audio) of the most common arrhythmias.
13. Medical Lab Tests: The application is designed primarily for doctors, nurses and medical students, but can be used by anyone who wants to know the meaning of different blood tests.
14. Mediquations Medical Calculator: With 214 formulas and scoring tools and a intuitive interface, Mediquations is the smart choice for anyone looking for a medical calculator.
15. My Health Records – Health n Family: Keep track of medical records, appointments and prescriptions and store important medical documents.
16. Papers: Read, organize and share your personal library of research, including a sync with your iPhone and Mac. Quickly find PDF articles from your library and read them in full screen on your new iPad.
17. The Human Body 2: Learn about the nervous, muscle, internal organ and skeletal systems in the body.
18. Xprompt: Forget the interpreter in the emergency room or inpatient or outpatient visits. Each language pack contains approximately 800 medically-themed phrases, and any two languages offered can be combined.

iPad Medical Apps between $10 and $20

19. Human Atlas: The Blausen Human Atlas iPhone application provides point-of-care access to 3D animations of common medical treatments and conditions, (approximately one-two minutes in length) with accompanying narration. For doctors, nurses, students and consumer caregivers, this is the ideal resource for communicating core concepts, right in the palm of your hand and right at point of care. Human Atlas Lite is available for free if you want to learn more about how this app operates before a purchase.
20. Osirix: OsiriX is a true DICOM image viewer that supports standard DICOM communications.

iPad Medical Apps over $20

21. Lexi-COMPLETE: This app provides access to all Lexi-Comp exclusive databases plus complementary licensed content. Includes Lexi-Drugs and Lexi-Interact (latter two apps in another suite for half the price).
22. Modality: Physicians, medical residents and students can prepare for, perform and test their knowledge of the most common medical procedures encountered in a clinical setting with this app.
23. Nursing Central: Although the download is free, a subscription must be purchased before viewing detailed information on diseases, tests, drugs, and procedures. Might be worth the subscription for anyone studying to become a nurse practitioner.
24. The 5-Minute Clinical Consult: This app is a database that contains comprehensive and structured information covering over 700 medical conditions.
25. VisualDx: You can download this app at no cost for a free trial, then pay a one-year subscription. This is the only medical app to show disease variation with multiple images of each disease.