Smart apps for the smart plastic surgeon-An update.

Sir,

Earlier this year, we had submitted an article on smartphone applications for plastic surgeons that was published in the January–April issue.[1] That article aimed to educate plastic surgeons on android mobile phone applications (both medical and nonmedical) that could help them in their daily practice. Due to the rapid pace of technology and the sheer number of applications available, we have found more apps of interest to our speciality. We would like to share them in this update, with the aim of enabling plastic surgeons to maximise their productivity and improving patient care. As before, we will present these apps under the nonmedical and medical headings:

NONMEDICAL APPS

SHAREit—Connect and Transfer

(SHAREit Technologies Co Ltd)

This is a file sharing app that works on the principle of Wi-Fi Direct. With this app installed on any two phones, large files (of several gigabytes) can be transferred in a matter of minutes, at a much faster rate than with Bluetooth. This is especially useful for sharing large portable document format (pdf) files.

Alternatives—Xender, Zapya

Rxphoto

(AppwoRx)

This is a clinical photography record keeping app that enables a surgeon to store his photos by anatomical location, as well as to maintain a series of photos [Figure 1 Inc.]

Figure 1

Mendelay

This is a photo-sharing app, meant specifically for doctors. With this app, clinical photos can be shared with other doctors (after consent) to enable discussion and teaching in a secure manner.

MEDICAL APPS

Innate Hair Calculator

(Innate Info Services Pvt. Ltd.)

This app enables one to calculate the number of grafts required for a hair transplant surgery based on the area of loss and the density required.

Mendeley

(Mendeley productivity)

It is often difficult to keep track of articles downloaded across different devices. Moreover, organizing and searching from a huge number of articles is no mean feat. Mendeley helps solve this problem. By downloading it on your phone and computer, it consolidates all your articles across all your devices into one database than you can access from any device. Moreover, it makes it very easy to search for articles by name, author, year etc., Another bonus is Mendeley has a plugin for Microsoft Word, by which you can manage references while writing an article very easily, and in the proper format.

Alternative—ReadCube

Read by QxMD

(QxMD Medical Software)

This is a fantastic application for finding new medical literature. This enables one to search articles from Pubmed and download articles automatically based on your subscriber access. Moreover, you can follow particular journals as well as receive notifications when a new article on a particular topic is available.

Breast reconstruction risk assessment (BRA) score

(Breast reconstruction risk assessment score Medical)

This app gives a percentagewise risk assessment of postoperative complications after breast reconstruction based on a twelve-point questionnaire

Alternative—Preoperative evaluation

While we have tried to be as exhaustive as possible, we have no doubt that we will find even more useful apps in the future. The pace of technology, while something to wonder at, necessitates that we constantly update and reinvent ourselves.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.