X-Ray App Assists Doctors In Diagnosing Rare Conditions

The great promise of the Internet was that it would bring power to the people by democratizing information. Experts say it has a ways to go, but in the medical field, as diagnostic methods leveraging mobile technology continue to reach more doctors and clinics, individuals are seeing concrete benefits in the form of better healthcare.

In recent years, ultrasound machines and eye exams have gone mobile, for example, and tiny portable lab kits have popped up to diagnose a number of diseases.

But an Irish venture, Experior Medical, is taking an indirect route to better care: It gives doctors practical experience via mobile device so they provide better care. Users of the company’s moniker app practice reading real X-ray images on an iPad in their downtime.

While a broken femur is easy to see, a tiny cancerous growth may not be, and doctors don't ever get much practice spotting rare conditions.

“The App contains thousands of typical X-ray images. While some are  obvious, some aren't, but they are typical X-rays that doctors would see in an emergency department," said Experior CEO Tom Lynch (pictured below).

Experior aims to prepare them for those rare but important occasions. It asks doctor-users to diagnose a series of real X-ray images and provides feedback on how they did. (X-rays can diagnose enlarged heart and digestive tract problems, among other things.) The app displays the correct diagnosis for every image along with the percentage doctor-users who correctly identified it. It also points to the particular user's overall strengths and weaknesses and recommends study materials to address the weaknesses.