The American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) has developed a mobile device application, iASE, which provides summaries of the society’s most popular guidelines.

The tool lets physicians access guidelines and calculators for echocardiography, combining numerous steps traditionally taken by practitioners into a single step, according to Chi-Ming Chow, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and staff cardiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

Chow, a member of the team that created the application for ASE’s IT committee, noted that while ASE’s cardiovascular ultrasound posters and pocket guides are useful 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.

Each guidelines summary includes tables, reference values and figures for review, that include tips on how to measure appropriately. A PDF of each guideline is available in the application’s library. The guidelines, which were published in the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography, include:

• Chamber Quantification (2005);
• Right Heart (2010);
• Valvular Regurgitation (2003); and
• Valvular Stenosis (2009).

“This is just the beginning of a paradigm shift taking place from desktop computers to mobile applications,” said IT Committee Chair Andrew M. Keller, MD, associate clinical professor of medicine at Columbia University in New York City, and medical executive director at Praxair Regional Heart and Vascular Center at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, Conn., where he also serves as chief of cardiology.

In addition to the just-released Android application, Keller said other guidelines and tools will be added to the platform in the future.