5 apps every physician should have

As mHealth continues to grow, there appears to be no end to the number of apps that facilitate delivery of healthcare services via smartphones and tablets.

But with 259,000 mHealth apps currently available on major app stores, it can be hard to know where to start. To complicate matters, only about a third of mHealth apps are developed with physicians as the target audience.

The good news is that we're here to give you the essentials. Here are five top mHealth apps that physicians everywhere are using.

1. Epocrates: This continues to be the most popular medical reference app for physicians, which now incorporates additional features. Epocrates is a great tool if you want to quickly look up drug information and interactions, securely communicate with your medical team through athenaText, or access information on lab tests and panels. The app is free and available for both iOS and Android, although the premium version provides additional functionality for $174.99 a year.

2. Medscape: Another popular medical reference tool, this free app by WebMD provides fast and accurate clinical answers at the point of care. Physicians, medical students, nurses, and other health care professionals use Medscape to look up medications and drugs, reference disease information, and catch up on medical news.

3. UpToDate: Taking a slightly different approach to medical reference, UpToDate is an app connected to a subscription service that costs practitioners $499 a year (prices vary by subscription length with discounts for students). With two free reference apps listed above, you might wonder what you're paying for with UpToDate. The answer is up to date information across 24 clinical specialties, including graded recommendations, access to continuing education (CME/CE/CPD) credits, and quality patient education materials.

4. Doximity: As the largest medical professional network in the US, Doximity claims over 60 percent of clinicians as members. Free and available for iOS and Android, physicians use the app for HIPAA-secure communication, electronic faxing, reading custom-curated news, and career management.

5. Read: Health care professionals need to stay up to date on the latest medical research and topic reviews to provide optimal care. Read is an app by medical software company QxMD that centralizes all your medical literature and journals. Users can organize and review personal collections, share on social media, and sign in through a university or institutional subscription for full text access in the app.