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The Merck Manual, first published in 1899, is the world’s best-selling medical book. Originally catering to health care professionals, it was re-edited in 1997 as The Merck Manual of Medical Information – Home Edition, using everyday language and trimming down technical information (like drug dosages). Its third edition was recently published as The Merck Manual Home Health Handbook; along with it, an iPhone/iPod Touch application (developed by Agile Partners) was released.

Cover Page

Details

The Merck Manual – Home Edition
Release Date: Sept. 18, 2009
Developer: Agile Partners Technologies, LLC
Price: $9.99
Version: 1.0
Size: 16.9 MB

For those among you who like categorizing apps, The Merck Manual – Home Edition is a medical reference (we can even safely call it an ebook).

Intended users:

This app is aimed at the general public who are not healthcare professionals. This is perfect for homemakers, teachers, and basically anyone who is concerned about his or her health and well-being. This is “essential for anyone who needs clarification of a diagnosis, wants a quick reference to a medical term, or would like to communicate more effectively with a healthcare professional” (iTunes application description).

There is a Professional Edition for healthcare personnel which we will review in the next few days.

Navigation

When you access the app, you are greeted by this clean and uncluttered home page.

Home

If you click on “Browse by Section,” you are taken to an alphabetical list of all the main topics in the ebook. For more urgent situations, you can go directly to the “Emergencies & Injuries” section:

Emergencies & Injuries

Tapping on the topic title takes you to the full page where you may read about the causes, diagnosis, treatment, etc. of the illness or injury whose information you seek. Navigating the page is just a matter of swiping up or down with your finger. There’s a back button on the upper left corner at all times. Some pages contain hyperlinks that take you to a related topic. There are also lots of illustrations (which you can zoom) to help you understand the subject more.

Illustrations

First aid topics, like splinting and CPR, benefit a lot from these images.

Illustrations 2

The app also has a cool feature where tapping on a highlighted generic drug name shows you its more common trade name(s):

Trade Names

Sharing, bookmarks/favorites and history

On every page, you have three buttons at the bottom of the screen (see figure above). The first button takes you back to the Home page. The gears button brings up a menu in which you can resize the text (there are two sizing options available) or email a link to the topic (the recipient is directed to a page on the online version of The Merck Manual). Tapping the star button bookmarks the page, which you can later access from the “Favorites” button on the Home page. In case you bookmark a page by mistake, tapping the star button a second time removes the page from your favorites. The Merck Manual – Home Edition also remembers the last page you were on, so you can easily pick up reading where you left off in case you have to make a call or use another iPhone or iPod Touch app. There’s also a “History” button on the Home page that shows you all the topics you’ve browsed and when (date and time) you last accessed them.

Resize text & email

Screen orientation

This app does not support the landscape mode, so those among us who have gotten accustomed to reading and surfing on the iPhone in widescreen will have to be content with reading The Merck Manual just like a real book–in portrait mode. Some tables and graphics in the ebook might have been better appreciated in the landscape orientation, though.

Search options

In case you don’t find what you’re looking for in the sections, you can go back to the Home page and use the search box or “explore the Index,” which also has its own search box:

Index

Extras

Two cool features of the app are somewhat related. Every time you access the home page, a random line of medical information is displayed under “Medically Speaking” (see the Home page figure above for an example). Tapping on “Learn more” takes you to the full page. Alternatively, clicking on the “Random” button (with the ? icon) at the bottom of the screen takes you to a new topic. We’re not big fans of having two ways to view random medical information. ; that extra button on the Home page may be better used to access some other feature.

On the Home page, when you tap the “Info” button, you are taken to this page:

Info page

“About this App” gives a brief history of the Merck Manual as printed books and iPhone app, along with the usual disclaimer for medical references. Any update to the app or other announcements from the app’s developers Agile Partners will be found in “Latest News.” As you can see, here is where you report bugs, suggest features, and sign up for the newsletter. Kudos to Agile Partners for enabling these in-app; it shows how much importance they give to customer feedback.

Thumbs up for…

- source credibility–this is The Merck Manual after all
- the full content is on your iPhone or iPod Touch; no Internet access required
- price (one-time charge of $9.99, no subscription needed); updates should be free
- easy navigation
- neat interface
- easy search and sharing
- bookmarks/favorites
- a dedicated Emergencies & Injuries button
- random medical information is a nice feature

We have to mention that we have not encountered any bugs or glitches with the application since we started using it.

Room for Improvement

In Merck & Co.’s press release, it was mentioned that “The Merck Manual Home Health Handbook includes…timely health topics such as the H1N1 (Swine) Flu.” The company also said that “the new app…contains the same material as The Merck Manual Home Health Handbook.” However, searching for “swine flu” just comes up with a single topic (Influenza) where swine flu is noted as a strain of the virus; searching for “H1N1″ yields no results. I don’t have access to the printed book so I can’t double check, but given that it was in the press release and H1N1 flu is on the nightly news, I would expect reasonable coverage on this particular subject. I’m sure it’s nothing that an update won’t fix.

We do have to say that some users may need more text resizing options (than “small” and “large”). Landscape mode support will also be a welcome feature. In no way, however, is the lack of these features considered to be a deal breaker.

We encourage everyone who uses this application to report bugs and/or suggest improvements, either in Medtapp’s comments section or directly to Agile Partners via the app’s Info page.

The Verdict

It should be noted that the full text of The Merck Manual-Home Edition can be accessed online for free. We tried doing that on the iPhone–reading text that is formatted for a desktop computer is not always a wonderful experience on a mobile device. And if you plan on reading more than one page, you better make sure your Internet connection is optimal. You can always get the printed version, selling for $39.95, but you can’t carry it around with you wherever you go. With this app, however, you have the world’s best-selling medical book literally at your fingertips (and at a quarter of the book’s price).

The buzzword “must-have” has been used to describe a number of applications, but in this age of burgeoning healthcare costs and patient empowerment, The Merck Manual – Home Edition app is truly indispensable.

Medtapp’s verdict: get this, buy this, TAPP THIS! Download The Merck Manual – Home Edition from the App Store now.