August 2, 2011 – The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) has developed iASE, a tool that provides clear, concise summaries of the ASE’s most popular guidelines as applications for mobile devices. This highly portable tool allows physicians to access guidelines and calculators for echocardiography in one place, combining many steps traditionally taken by practitioners into one easy step, according to Chi-Ming Chow, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and staff cardiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Ontario. Chow, part of the team that created the application for ASE’s Information Technology (IT) Committee, noted that while ASE’s posters and pocket guides to the guidelines for cardiovascular ultrasound are wonderful in traditional settings, the mobile application can be used by practitioners anywhere: at the patient’s bedside, while teaching residents how to take measurements or when sharing calculations with sonographers, making it an ideal teaching and reference tool.
Each guideline summary includes key tables, reference values and figures that are quick and easy to review, with tips and tricks on how to measure appropriately. A full PDF of each guideline is available in the library on the application. The guidelines, which were published in the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography (JASE), are:
• Chamber Quantification (2005)
• Right Heart (2010)
• Valvular Regurgitation (2003)
• Valvular Stenosis (2009)
“This is just the beginning of a paradigm shift from desktop computers to mobile applications,” said IT Committee Chair Andrew Keller, M.D., associate clinical professor of medicine, Columbia University and medical executive director at Praxair Regional Heart and Vascular Center of Danbury Hospital, Danbury, Conn., where he is also chief of the cardiology section. He stressed that additional guidelines and tools will be added to the platform in the future, and that an Android version has just been released.
iASE, which is available at an introductory price of $4.99, is supported on most of the current Apple iOS devices.
For more information: www.asecho.org/apps