CORE – Clinical Orthopedic Exam is the new medical application available for the iPhone topping the charts for orthopedic applications…. let’s see why!
Developed by Clinically Relevant Technologies (www.clinicallyrelevant.com), this app looks to deliver what many others are lacking…. more substance and less frills.
Let’s look at the mission statement found on the homepage:
“Committed to creating solutions that are not only clinically relevant to the medical community, but easy to access and implement in a variety of clinical settings. There is a need in medicine for tools that promote evidence-based interventions. Clinically Relevant Technologies strives to transform the gap between knowledge of evidence and actionable practice, with a focus on the musculoskeletal system. “
This application has a database of over 250 named clinical tests used for orthopaedic and musculoskeletal diagnosis. The criteria for inclusion of a clinical test into the application are:
- The test must be described/referenced in a peer-reviewed medical journal,
- The test must be used in the evaluation and diagnosis of musculoskeletal pathology,
- The test would be performed by the clinician or as part of clinical evaluation (not to include laboratory or diagnostic imaging tests for example).
What you will find in this app:
- - Almost 250 clinical tests used in the diagnosis of musculoskeletal disorders
- - Instructions on how to perform the test as originally described by the author
- - Video demonstration on how to perform the test
- - Diagnostic utility of the test (in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratios, as well as reliability coefficients)
- - Links to PUBMed where you can read the journal abstract and then order the article if you so wish (**ability to order actual articles is not a feature of this app)
Some applications give you a list of tests, some even show picture and videos, but none actually provide the diagnostic categories so that you can put the context of the results into perspective. This application truly promotes evidence-based diagnosis for an evidence-based practice. It’s applicable to medical students, residents, professors, clinicians, and researchers. It is definitely clinically relevant!
Available in the App Store
