From my various stints in doctors offices, mostly for sports related injuries, I’ve noticed an interesting trend in the medical field. For the most part, family doctors, particularly pediatricians, are fairly low tech. Even in the high tech world we live in, many doctors prefer to use paper based charts and graphs instead of digital devices that would speed up their work considerably. I do understand the trade-off, sacrificing speed for a guarantee of no crashes, but at some point we need to move forward.
Pediacents, a new app by Exsilico, is designed to completely take paper and guess-work out of determining pediatric blood pressure percentiles. As of now, the only way that pediatricians can determine if children need further evaluation of treatment for high blood pressure is by looking at a slew of time consuming charts and graphs, only still to come up with a number that is often imprecise. With this new app, doctors can type in a child’s blood pressure and instantly see their exact blood pressure percentile, based on CDC growth data and regression algorithms, in an instant. While figuring out the blood pressure percentiles, Pediacents also calculates BMI and BSA, and instantly shows you the child’s BMI, weight, and height percentiles… all without the use of any charts or graphs.
Apps like Pediacents will never top the app charts, but apps like this really do show the great potential that the iPhone has to do some good in this world. We’re getting to a place where a family doctor or pediatrician could almost do all of their work on an iOS device, hopefully making those long waits in the reception areas a thing of the past. If anything, it would be pretty neat to have my doctor walking around with an iPad instead of a clip board.
Released: 2010-07-29 :: Category: Medical
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