DocWire App, an up-to-date collection of the latest medical journal articles and news

Healthcare professionals need to stay current with the latest medical news and research. The best way to access the medical literature, journal articles and news is by using mobile devices and apps that enable users to read their favorite medical journals on their phones.

We already reviewed two amazing apps that bring the latest medical journal articles at your fingertips. One is Read by QxMD app and another is Docphin app.

The app we review today is similar to these two apps in terms of keeping the medical professionals up-to-date on the medical news and literature in an easily accessible form. The app name is DocWire, and it was previously known as DocNews and Docwise (which still exists, but as a completely different app).

DocWire app aggregates the latest articles from various medical journals and medical news sources. It's been developed by two MIT alums who made the app available for free on iPhone and iPad.

Once you download and start the app, it will require you to register an account by providing basic personal information, including your name, email, state, institution, as well as your specialty and subspecialty that would help the app create an initial journal collection tailored to your specialty and your interests.

For example, I chose Internal Medicine as my specialty, so the Home page I've been taken to after registration has been populated with news and articles related to this specialty.

I've encountered a problem while registering an account - too small input fields in the registration form. The letters you type in those fields are also way too small, provided in Italics font, and grayed out, so it was really difficult to see what I was typing. There's enough space, even on smaller screens to make the registration form a little bit bigger, and the font more visible and user-friendly.

Another thing I noticed is that US states were separated. I presume it was easier for developers to do so, because of an institutional access required to view particular articles.

As said, the Home page contains the initial collection of news and articles based on your specialty. For Internal Medicine there was a lot of topics, and I noticed that the NEJM articles and news from FDA MedWatch dominate the main screen.

There are also JAMA articles, including  JAMA Internal Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and more. While a lot of these topics, mostly those from NEJM, are free to access, some require institutional access and login details that can be added in settings.

Keep in mind that currently, not all institutions are available. So, if your institution isn't there, you can try to contact developers and ask them if they could add your institution to the list.

However, there's no any indicator which articles require an institutional access, so users may waste their time opening all articles they cannot view. A red ribbon beside the title or some other icon indicating that article requires an institutional access would be great improvement and time-saver.

DocWire app isn't only limited to your specialty. You can add resources for other specialties as well. To do that tap on Menu icon on the top right of the screen. There is a blue 'Add' button enabling you to add additional journals based on other specialties, ranging from General to Urology and Vascular Surgery.

In the same manner, you can add medical news sources that cover other specialties and topics, including scientific resources, such as Eurekaalert, ACEP News, MedPage Today, and general news providers, such as BBC Health News, CNN Health, Forbes, and more.

The sources you chose for both journal articles and news would appear on the Home page and will be regularly and automatically updated.

Similarly, you can add topics of your interest to the news feed by searching for particular keywords, such as "hypertension" or "cholecystostomy", and get the related news and articles in your news feed. I guess that "hypertension" keyword wasn't too specific because I got too broad results.

You can switch between journals, news, and topics in the Menu, and the Home page would change accordingly.

Topics can be added to My Reading List by tapping on the star icon next to the title, or to Library by tapping on library icon in the article preview window.

Articles can be shared by social networks, emailed, or added to Evernote. The articles and news open in the resource's website or sometimes in PDF format, but either way that action requires an Internet connection. There is no option to save/download the articles for an offline view.

The date of publication is the default sort order in the headlines view, and there's no option to choose particular date, which makes viewing older topics difficult. Optionally, you could pick the journal of your interest in the Menu, and then use the search option, but only if you know the title of the article, or at least the main keywords.

DocWire app is nicely designed with an easy-to-use interface that reminds on Flipboard and other similar news aggregators. The font is pleasant and visible, except in registration form I mentioned above.

Overall, DocWire is a good addition to the bunch of existing mobile apps, which aggregate articles from top medical journals, medical news sources, as well as general medical topics, in order to help healthcare professional stay current with the latest medical news. There is a room for improvement, but those are tiny fixes and addition that would help the app look even better.

Benefit: All medical providers who want to stay updated on medical journal articles and news should use this app