Five More Anaesthesia Apps To Check Out 

InfusiCalc

InfusiCalc is a drug dose calculator that determines doses, infusion rates, and drip rates and so on for several common injectable agents. Notes about important side effects and dangers are given with each drug.  The app can be of real use in making quick but correct decisions. The app is available free of cost on the AppStore and on Google Play.

General Paediatric Anaesthesia

This app, available free on Google Play, is another smart and handy calculator. Reviews by anaesthetists using it on the field are pretty good. The app calculates tidal volume, ETT length and diameter, cardio version strength and several other such parameters in addition to drug doses. Decision making in the OT has never been this simple.

iCU Notes

The app provides easy to access and organized information on a wide range of topics that can spring up at any time in the Intensive Care Unit. The details are given in bullet points making it easy to read and assimilate. The list of topics is pretty comprehensive and helpful. The interface however is amateurish and lacks visual content. If you look past the packaging though it’s a helpful app to have on your smartphone.

ACTc Lite

To begin with ACTc stands for "Anaesthesia clinical tutor and calculator". This app, developed by Anthony Young, is the total package. It can be used for dose calculation, fluid tracking, blood transfusion calculations, patient tailored case setups and so forth. Case specific literature reviews, clinical networking and integrated research features with the NCBI are additional perks. The app's interface is drab and easy to overlook, but apart from that it really doesn't have much against it.

Anaesthesia Impact

The app is an interactive tool for inhalational anaesthetics tracking. The interface is visual and simple. It allows adjustment of the fresh gas flow in the flow meter, and changes in the inhalant agent concentration. The app displays the cost per hour and the CO2 emissions, comparing it with the distance a car travels to make the same emissions. The cost per bottle, the car's efficiency and CO2 equivalence can be changed from the settings. Thus the app helps to estimate the cost to the patient, and the cost to the environment, two things that the anaesthetist must keep in mind about the impact of his/her decisions.

READ Reviewed By Physicians: Top Ten Cardiology Apps

There are a host of other apps that could be very useful but are not included because they have paid subscriptions. There are plenty of apps from anaesthesiology journals and textbooks including the oxford handbooks that should definitely be used by a resident/specialist. Having said that, there is also a dearth of apps that could really inform clinical decision making when things get complicated. Easily accessible and comprehensive collections of different studies to support evidence-based medicine also need to be compiled and made available as free apps. Apps by professional bodies and institutes are scarcer compared to other specialties. However, considering the extensive and rapid calculations an anesthetist has to do in the OR, the diligent screening required pre-op, the multitude of devices used in the ICU – there is considerable scope to develop applications far surpassing those available now in their utility and innovation.