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When Ashwin Chetty first started his clinical rotation in pediatric surgery, he would often rely on ChatGPT and the app OpenEvidence, which is designed to help healthcare providers with summaries of peer-reviewed research; the apps helped him think of questions an attending doctor might ask him about the surgeries he planned to see the next day.

These artificial intelligence (AI)–driven assists didn’t replace studying. Rather, they served as a starting point for Chetty to figure out what material he needed to study more.

“Ultimately, that next day, it was super helpful,” he said of utilizing these resources. Chetty’s attending doctor did ask him the questions which he identified and thought about.

For Chetty, who is a second-year medical student at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, these tools also help him structure what subject matter he needs to know for his clinical rotations.

Given the sheer volume of material presented to medical students, you often need to pinpoint what areas you need to focus on right now, he said. “These resources can help me do that type of prioritization,” said Chetty.

Which evidence-based apps are best for helping medical students learn to diagnose illnesses, prescribe medications, and stay current on peer-reviewed medical research? Here are our picks.

1. UpToDate 

This app and corresponding website help medical students make point-of-care decisions by providing evidence-based information on different medical conditions. UpToDate also offers drug-related information.

The app is a favorite for fourth-year medical student Isabella Ntigbu.

“This is very much the bread-and-butter clinical knowledge library used by medical providers and can be very useful to look something up on the fly while on your clinical rotations or to just learn more about a medical diagnosis or process,” Ntigbu said in an email. “The library uses evidence-based resources and references in their articles.” 

Medical students can type in a question, and a suggestion will pop up for common searches. There are additional features, such as medical calculators and information on drug interactions.

Healthcare providers can also access continuing education credits. A history feature allows users to revisit topics they’ve previously viewed, and they can create bookmarks to organize saved topics, graphics, and calculators.

“I use that a lot to do background reading and understand what the latest guidelines are for something,” Chetty said about UpToDate, which he likens to a “Wikipedia for doctors.” 

Medical students must register to access UpToDate. It also requires an individual subscription or institutional support to use.

2. OpenEvidence

OpenEvidence— which has a content agreement with The New England Journal of Medicine — enables users to quickly generate answers to medical questions. The app and corresponding website are based on peer-reviewed academic medical literature.

OpenEvidence is a favorite of Rico Carter, a first-year medical student at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio.

“You may also ask follow-up questions or ask for points of clarification that will drive into the topic in more detail,” Carter said in an email.

Carter likes the app’s ability to “link specific literature to the topics that I discuss, ensuring the explanations are evidence based,” he said.

OpenEvidence is currently free and unlimited to licensed healthcare professionals, but they must register first.

3. MDCalc Medical Calculator 

This app and corresponding website serve as a clinical reference and decision-making tool. The app offers a wide variety of calculators for dose calculations.

It is another favorite app of Ntigbu, who plans to start her residency in emergency medicine in June.

It helps with common evidence-based calculations, such as the Pulmonary Embolism Rule-out Criteria score to exclude a diagnosis of pulmonary embolism and the Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Scale score for measuring the severity of opioid withdrawal, Ntigbu said.

The app offers evidence-based tools written by physician experts and supports over 50 specialties that cover over 200 patient conditions, according to the website.

“That’s one I’ve definitely used a lot,” said Chetty, “especially when I was in the emergency department when you’re trying to risk stratify patients.” He has utilized the app to help with questions like: “What’s the risk of this patient having a deep vein thrombosis or having a pulmonary embolism?” 

MDCalc’s core functions are free, but some parts of the app — such as earning continuing medical education credits — require a paid subscription.

4. AMBOSS 

The AMBOSS app and website provide a medical knowledge platform that is also evidenced-based. According to the app, it allows users to quickly define medical terms, learn how to identify details in medical imaging, and diagnose medical conditions with accuracy.

The AMBOSS platform also helps medical students study for shelf exams and the United States Medical Licensing Step 1 and 2 exams, said Ntigbu. This app is “very helpful for third-year medical students on their clinical rotations,” she said.

To use most of AMBOSS’s features, you need to pay a membership fee.

5. USPSTF Preventive TaskForce App

This app is part of the United States Preventive Services Task Force, an expert panel that puts forth clinical preventive services’ recommendations — including screenings and counseling — that are evidence-based. For example, it makes recommendations for breast and colon cancer screenings. There is also a website.

The app allows medical students to “put in different characteristics of the particular patient that you’re working with, and it’ll show you the different guidelines that might be relevant to that particular patient,” Chetty said, “so that’s really handy to have.” 

This app is free.

6. VisualDx

The VisualDx app and its corresponding website bring together illustrations of disease with diagnostic frameworks.

The app — which started out as a dermatology image program and now covers general medicine — allows a healthcare professional or medical student to build a differential diagnosis based on a patient’s chief complaint and to search conditions in order to find treatment and testing options.

“It combines expert knowledge, a leading medical image library, and AI to support better clinical decisions, treatment, and patient communications,” Robert Sklar, director of Implementation at VisualDx and a paramedic by training, said in an email.

It is “uniquely positioned to help students by providing a comprehensive, evidence-based tool that enhances diagnostic accuracy and clinical decision-making,” Sklar added.

VisualDx requires a paid subscription.

Other apps that are not necessarily evidence-based but those Chetty relies on during his day-to-day work as a medical student, include ChatGPT and Sketchy— a visual depiction app and website that “a lot of people use to study microbiology and pharmacology,” he said. Sketchy requires a paid subscription.

Chetty also likes the flashcard app Anki, which is free. There are “tens of thousands of cards that are about different medical school-related topics,” he said.

“For me, Anki is enormous,” said Chetty. “… there’s so much material in med school and one of the hardest parts for me is retaining it. So being able to have cards come back and kind of have this automated review mechanism — that’s been really helpful.” 

Which medical or study-related apps work best is a personal decision each medical student needs to make, according to Chetty. “I think ultimately it comes down to understanding how you study and how you like to collect information and retain it and just figuring out the workflow that works best for you,” he said.