• Download the new issue each Thursday, and store all downloaded issues in a personal library
• Bookmark articles, images & figures
• Watch clinical medicine videos
• Listen to an audio summary for each issue
• Capture and save article notes, and even share them via email, Facebook & Twitter

Non-subscribers view a fully functional free issue, preview the table of contents for each issue and read Online First articles. App-only subscriptions of the NEJM are $14.99 per month, and purchase of a single issue is $5.99 each. At first glance, it does not yet appear that institutional subscribers can use this app to access NEJM, which is a significant oversight. Many faculty, researchers and physicians here at the University of Utah rely on the NEJM, and if a clinical reference tool such as LexiComp can provide an institutional version of their software, so can a top-notch journal publisher.

In downloading the iPad app, I discovered the NEJM Career Center, an iPhone/iPad app that, like its website counterpart, will help physicians search listings of physician and locum tenens job listings by location, specialty or position type. It notifies users of new jobs that match their search criteria, and allows them to email or tweet jobs to themselves or their personal networks.

If you want to keep up on the latest researched published in NEJM, subscribe to their weekly audio summaries podcast, NEJM This Week. Each podcast is 20-25 minutes long, and includes new medical research findings, review articles, and editorial opinion pieces on topics related to biomedical science and clinical practice.

Do you use any of the NEJM apps? What do you like or dislike about them? Tell us about it!

With the app’s tools, users can:

• Add or remove up to 10 layers of muscles with the Scalpel
• Rotate muscles vertically and horizontally
• Move laterally between muscle groups
• Turn on standard pin-style labels which illustrate major musculoskeletal points in each view
• Test themselves using the Quiz function.

This app is currently prices at $19.99. As of this writing, the page in the iTunes store for this app indicates that the developer, 3D4Medical.com, has “agreed to extend the price reduction for this app for another few weeks.”

Pros

• High-quality 3-D muscle images that can be easily manipulated.
• Quiz function
• Detailed information about muscle groups via pin labels

Cons: it lacks some information regarding skeletal components of the systems.

Do you use this app? Tell us about it!

• 8 built-in search engines for access to millions of articles.
• Download and store PDFs of the articles you read.
• Highlight and add notes to your PDFs.
• Pinch and zoom features native to the iPad.
• Email, print and share a paper with other Papers users wirelessly.
• Stores 5,000 papers.
• Import papers from web-based storage services like Dropbox.

Papers will sync with the desktop version ($79), adding even more powerful literature management.

Papers is also available for the iPhone.

Have you used Papers, either the mobile or the desktop version? Tell us about it!

At the bottom of any EBSCO search or search results page there is a link “New: EBSCOhost iPhone/iPod Touch Application.” When clicked on, this link opens a window where you can enter your email to receive the two-step instructions for installing the app.

1. Download the app from the iTunes App Store, and sync it to your iPhone/iPod touch.
2. EBSCO sends you a verification email. View the email on your iPhone and tap on the link to authenticate your app in order to access all the subscription databases University of Utah Libraries subscribe to.

According to the iTunes App Store, this robust app “enables users to:

• Choose which databases to search
• Limit results to full text or peer reviewed
• Sort by relevance or date
• Retrieve full text results in HTML and/or PDF formats
• Save results for offline access at a later date
• Email results to self or others
• View cover flow display of results”

In addition, it will save your 25 most recent searches automatically.

One feature that is lacking is the ability to export results to citation management software such as EndNote. Perhaps if EBSCO made it possible to sync search results with the “My EBSCOhost” feature of the online version, the end user could easily save their search results to EndNote when they get back to their computer.

Have you used EBSCOhost’s mobile app, or another one like it? Tell us about it!

As mentioned in a previous post, having medical texts on a 1-2 pound device is a physical relief for students and others who need to carry these books around. But like their print counterparts, you need to pay for each new edition that comes out.

Unlike its print version, you can use your mobile computing power to search the textbook, and even place electronic bookmarks on its pages. And its “History” feature tracks what pages you’ve read, making it easy to refer back to previous information.

The Eccles Health Sciences Library offers eBook versions of both Clinical Anesthesiology and Current Diagnosis… through a subscription with Access Medicine. Up to three simultaneous users can consult these texts, and can print, email, or download sections or chapters for later reading.

Have you bought a mobile medical text? How does the experience compare to reading it online, or in hard copy? Tell us!

Some 35% of U.S. adults have software applications or “apps” on their phones, yet only 24% of adults use those apps. Many adults who have apps on their phones, particularly older adults, do not use them, and 11% of cell owners are not sure if their phone is equipped with apps.

The report goes on to note several additional observations about mobile app users:

• Apps users are younger, more educated, and more affluent than other cell phone users.
• App use ranks relatively low (9th) on a list of “non-voice cell phone use.”
• 29% of adult cell phone users have downloaded an app to their phone.
• One in eight adult cell phone users (13%) has paid to download an app.
• Data indicate that games are the most popular apps, followed by news/weather, maps/navigation, social networking, and music.

The authors of the blog post summarizing their findings call this “the Rise of Apps Culture” and call it a “pretty remarkable tech adoption story.” Yet games are the most popular items to download. Perhaps this is not a story of how one society adopted a new tech paradigm in record time. Rather it may just be people with “disposable” income acting like a kid who just got paid his/her allowance and raced to the corner drug store to buy a pack of sports trading cards for the new season.

What do you think?