Medical Schools Developing School-Specific Apps for Students

Since I recently suggested 5 Must-Have Apps for Medical Students, I found this article to be intriguing. Apparently, medical schools are starting to create their own apps for students in their programs. The articles lists five reasons why medical schools are starting to provide students with school-specific apps:

1. There is no readily available means of knowing which apps are safe, reliable, and useful
2. The apps are developed by clinicians and others out of real and specific needs
3. A wide range of resources are readily available
4. Reimbursement is not a prerequisite for development
5. They are unique and complex healthcare institutions

Until certification programs, such as the one being developed by Happtique, are up and running, I would be wary of trusting just any medical app out there. For that reason alone, I think it is a good idea for med schools to create apps that they approve for students to use. That, or provide a list of apps that have been reviewed by professors and clinicians at the University. Because probably every student in medical school has a smart phone, this would be a great resource to have available for students.

Every school is different, even if the bulk of the material taught is the same. Having course-specific apps developed by clinicians and other educators at the school would be helpful for both students and teachers a like. The article mentioned that this could possibly encourage adoption success, which is a win-win all around. And going into number three, what better place to develop a medical app than a place that has just about every medical resource available? I would be way more likely to trust an app created using medical school resources than just some company that creates apps.

I feel like most of the reasons are similar and connected in some way, but they definitely make sense. While I’m not a med student, or anything close to it, I can definitely see the value in this. There are a lot of possibilities for great apps that could be created. It makes me wonder if possibly a new fee will be added to the already exorbitantly high tuition that comes with medical school: app creation fee. I don’t see this totally coming without a price!