EP Mobile FAQ

As a practicing electrophysiologist, there are lots of things to
remember, such as calculating antiarrhythmic drug doses based on
renal function, calculating QTc intervals by hand, diagnosing
conditions such as long QT syndrome, short QT syndrome, and
arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy, and
localizing origins of ventricular tachycardia or accessory pathway
locations based on 12 lead ECGs. There are a large number of check
lists, risk scores, algorithms, and so forth available but scattered
across journal articles, textbooks, drug package inserts and
elsewhere on the Internet. I decided to pull all this together into
a mobile app that I could carry with me on my cell phone. In a
sense this is like off-loading part of my brain onto my phone (which I always carry with me anyway) to make room for more important things.

According to my GitHub repository the first commit was Aug 7, 2011.
Android version 0.1 was released on Aug 25, 2011. The first Apple
iOS version was released on Nov 6, 2012.

Other than user interface differences mandated by the two different
platforms, the functionality of both versions is the same.

The cost to be an Android developer is a one time $25 fee. Apple
charges $99 per year to be a developer. I would prefer that both
versions would be free, however I think I have to make up for the
yearly cost of development by charging for the Apple version. Note
that the cost is minimal (99 cents in US).

I have not downloaded epTools intentionally, so as not to copy
another colleague’s work. There are only so many ways to present a
risk score or an algorithm, so I am sure there are some
unintentional similarities. Note that epTools is free, but as far
as I can tell is only available on the Apple platform (someone
please correct me if I am wrong). I encourage you to download it!  One final point, EP Mobile has no Ads or in-app purchases.

Some of the references are in the program itself. A complete set of
references is here.

To avoid copyright issues. Fortunately the anatomy of the heart has
not changed since then.

Yes. Here.

The dosing table attempts to give the closest value to the
recommended dosing change, using the tablet size selected. You can
try a different tablet size to see if you get more reasonable dosing.

That’s up to you. If you have done it any length of time, you
realize that warfarin dosing is a very inexact science. If you
think your patient is more or less sensitive to dosing changes, this
can guide you in your choice.

Read the guidelines carefully. Patients with ischemic
cardiomyopathy must have a history of previous myocardial infarction
to qualify for an ICD. This is a problem with the guidelines, not
the program.

Yes.  Medicine is a moving target and I will try to keep up to date with the latest guidelines, drugs, risk scores, etc.  Also note that I do try to incorporate user requests into the program, so please leave a comment or email me.

Will there be a Windows Phone version?

I am not planning to port EP Mobile to the Windows Phone platform.  This would mean translating the source code to yet another language.  I would prefer to concentrate on the two platforms that are already coded.  But see the next question.

Will there be a web version?

Maybe.  I am considering implementing at least some of the functionality of the app on a webpage, which would allow phones without native platform support (i.e. Windows Phone) to use the mobile website.