• Developer name: Daniel Schwartz
• Developing Since:2007
• Company Name:QxMD Software
• Apps at the App Store:5
• Location:Vancouver, BC, Canada

About Dev:

Tell us a little about you, and your current company.

QxMD is dedicated to producing high quality applications to support medical practice. As a practicing physician and medical educator, I have long recognized that access to decision support tools at the point of care has the potential to significantly improve patient outcomes. While computers are now plentiful in medicine, in real life, patients are often assessed in crowded emergency departments, on hospital wards, in the OR or even at home, far away from a desktop computer. The increasing ubiquity of handheld devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry means that we can now get our software to the bedside.

QxMD is headed by myself and our lead developer and software engineer, Samuel Kruse.
While we need to generate revenue to operate, we are also committed to providing free software to our ever growing user base – about 80,000 as of February 2009.

About your background: what did you do before taking up iPhone development?

I was (and still am) a practicing physician. My experience in the medical field helps me maintain excellent insight into the needs of medical professionals. I have also been taking advantage of the internet to enhance medical education and encourage professional collaboration with such projects as www.Converge.MD, www.NephrologyNow.com and www.MedicalPearls.com.

About your Work:

What apps have you developed so far? Tell us about your apps in brief.

We have 5 completed iPhone Apps (with many more in development).

1. Our most popular app is “The ECG Guide”, www.theECGguide.com. Exactly as it sounds, it is a guide to interpretation of the electrocardiogram (ECG). For non-medical readers, an ECG is a graphical representation of the electrical signals given off by the heart used to diagnose heart disease.
Our guide provides 3 functions
A. Learning tool – It provides step-by-step instructions on how to interpret ECGs as well as detailed descriptions of useful topics. We provide over 100 high-resolution ECGs so users can learn by example.
B. Reference guide – Many physicians learn ECG interpretation, but due to their complexity it needs to be refreshed every so often. The program is organized so that one can drill down to a topic of interest and get instant ECG review as needed.
C. Study Guide – Students can use our quiz feature to be battered by ECGs and forced to interpret – but without the pressure of an attending physician breathing down their necks.

2. “Safe OR: Safety Checklist”, www.SafeOR.org, is adapted from the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist. This tool forces medical staff in an operating room to run through a safety checklist before proceeding with surgery, just as airline pilots do before take-off. Sounds simple, but a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine has shown that this intervention may reduce complications after surgery, including death, by up to 40%. We hope that physicians around the world will adopt this protocol and it’s much easier to use our App than memorize the 19-step checklist. The App is also safer than a paper checklist - if an item is skipped, it forces you to complete the list before surgery can proceed.

We have also developed 3. Heme Calc, 4. Cardio Calc and 5. Neph Calc.
These are clinical calculators and decision support tools, for problems encountered in Cardiology, Hematology and Nephrology. They are all provided free of charge and are designed for students, trainees and generalists, not just specialists practicing in those fields.

How do you go from idea to app? What’s the process?

Once we get the idea for a new app, our first priority is designing the user interface. For busy medical professionals, even momentarily delays are unacceptable, so we try to streamline our software to get the desired answer as quickly as possible. We sketch out screenshots and make sure our interface is both logical and intuitive. From there we convert these ideas into code. Our development is highly iterative, in that we seek out feedback from both experienced and newbie iPhone users, and then tailor from there. Once we release our software, we accumulate feedback from our user base, and use these ideas to further optimize the Apps.

Any exciting stuff you are working on? Give our readers a hint of what to expect from you next.

Without revealing too much, one current project is trying to address the problem of patients being unable to communicate with their caregivers due to language barriers. This is a problem that impacts quality of care and can leave patients feeling isolated and wondering if they are being optimally treated.

We are also adding to our free clinical calculator series and will be releasing content for Gastroenterology, Obstetrics, Emergency Medicine and Respirology.

Do you develop for other platforms? How do you compare the iPhone development platform with other platforms?

We also develop for the BlackBerry and have plans to port all our iPhone offerings to the BlackBerry in time for the launch of the BlackBerry Application Centre. A selection of our current BlackBerry offerings can be found at here. www.QxMD.com/products.

The IPhone IDE is the best we’ve ever used. It is pleasant to code in, and has handy features such as integration with SVN. Also, the API has many elements that help make the Apps look great. It would be nice if some of the restrictions were eased to allow more access to the restricted APIs. However, compared to developing for other platforms, it is a joy and Apple has definitely set the standard.

Tell us something about how users are responding to your apps. What’s the most flattering comment you have received? Or the weirdest?

The response to our software has been incredibly supportive and positive. I am most pleased when I hear that medical professionals find that our programs help them do a better job in looking after their patients.

About the App Store:

Name two iPhone apps you consider are cool, excluding the apps you’ve developed. What makes these apps stand out?

One of my favourite medical apps – other than our own – is Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards. This App provides outstanding content (I used it during my medical training) that is optimally adapted for the iPhone platform. Not only useful for medical students, this resource is fantastic for practicing physicians who (patients, plug your ears) need a quick refresher when trying to recall anatomy they may not have reviewed recently.

Jaadu VNC is another great app. It allows you to connect and obtain complete access to your computer directly from your iPhone. Outstanding usability and simple interface.

Any message to your fellow developers?

Keep pushing the envelope on creativity and innovation. Also, we’re always open to collaboration, so if any developers out there have ideas that might be applied to the medical field, send us a note.

Thank you Daniel for your time.