Download the IOS app: Free
Download the Android app: Free
(In-app Purchases: £5-£60 approx.)
Developer: BMJ, London
BMJ Best Practice is an app that aims to aid diagnosis and guide the practitioner through the treatment process of a number of pathologies. Guidelines on examinations, tests and medications are provided across 977 topics. These are not all available initially; some conditions are presented as a free sample, whilst the rest must be purchased either in one go (£59.99), or by categories such as Critical Care and Emergency Medicine (£15.99), and Cardiovascular Disorders, Vascular and Cardiothoracic Surgery (£7.99). Institutional access is available, so if your trust/ university subscribes to the service, you can access all of the content for free.
These are the good things BMJBP does. Unfortunately, it does a great deal worse when it comes to every other aspect of its content and execution.
Whilst the level of content is very good, straightforward and to the point, it’s unlikely that you’ll actually get to see any of it, as the sample pages don’t always load, and when they do, they don’t save. Frequently, I left the app to take a call, and returned to it to find it had rebooted. In addition, whilst the developer’s ability to extract the subscription fee for paid content suffers no problems, their ability to supply said content is non-existent. I purchased the “Cardiovascular Disorders…” category for £7.99, and was told by the “My Topics” section of the app, that I didn’t own any of the documents, yet was told by the “Subscribe” page, that I did..! Either way, I couldn’t (and still can’t) view any of the content I have paid for.
I sent an email over to the BMJ customer service department, and was politely informed that subscriptions were handled by Google, and there was nothing that BMJ could themselves do. As it turns out, subscribed content is entirely the responsibility of the BMJ, so when I pointed this out, and asked for a refund, I was met with a wall of silence that is currently ongoing.
Although it may be tempting to download this app, I strongly recommend that you do not; the content isn’t there, the app itself is buggy and the developer’s desire to help with problems is as present as the paid topics, in that both have yet to materialise. Judging by the user reviews left on Google Play, I am not the only user to have faced any of these problems, so it’s not as though the devs are unaware.
This app doesn’t do enough, regarding functionality, to warrant being this unfinished. It genuinely frightens me to think that someone was paid a wage to develop this, and even more frightening, is that the BMJ are charging for content, despite the numerous complaints of bugs and such. The app lists its last update as 2015, but lord knows what it addressed, or how much worse it was before, if this is considered sufficient.
This, dear reader, is how NOT to make a mobile app.
The Student Physiologist 