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My use of the iPad in day-to-day clinical anesthesiology activities is limited. Cases are sufficiently busy that there isn’t a huge amount of extra time. The most frequent use is to check on my hospital email. Here are the applications I use most after email:

• GoodReader — ($5) I switched from iAnnotate recently because GoodReader has better WebDAV support. I have a library of PDFs on my laptop which I sync to the iPad using the IIS WebDAV server. The screenshot here shows the Supraclavicular Block chapter from the Military Advanced Regional Anesthesia and Analgesia handbook. Note that iAnnotate has some features GoodReader lacks, such as full-text search across all PDFs in your library.



• Flipboard — Flipboard is easier to show than to explain. It aggregates RSS feeds, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social network services into a beautiful, magazine-style interface. I use it to catch up on anesthesiology updates, medical app news, and other items of interest. Compare Page2@Anesthesiology in your web browser to the Flipboard appearance:



• Noteshelf is a beautiful note taking and drawing application for the iPad. I recommend using it with the Wacom Bamboo Stylus for iPad. Great for teaching and marking up graphs and photos. Worth the $10.
• Netter’s Anatomy Atlas — Incredibly expensive at $90, this app is a great conversion of the venerable Netter’s Anatomy Atlas into an interactive iPad application. It’s a helpful learning aid during complex surgeries to figure out what’s going on. The plates help reinforce the relationships of nerves and vessels, which are important for regional anesthesia techniques. Netter’s is not quite worth $90, but if someone offers you this app as a gift, do not turn it down. The free version is certainly worth picking up.
• The Wolters Kluwer Health apps for the journals Anesthesiology and Anesthesia & Analgesia merit a download, but I would not pay an extra fee for iPad access. There’s just not enough benefit over paper.

If you have favorite iPad or iPhone apps that you use with your work in anesthesiology, let me know in the comments.

Tags:   anesthesia · app · flipboard · ipad1 Comment