My childhood was different from most of my friends’ because I was raised having a Physician for a father. Having a doctor in the family made all those childhood rashes and fevers and runny noses go by without a hitch, with dad’s calm and unwavering at-home care, when many other parents would have been in a calamitous fit, not knowing whether that rash on Jimmy’s stomach was from rolling in the grass, or a fungal infection from a common bacteria found in pools, or maybe even – to pose an extreme plausibility – scarlet fever. For the pedestrian without a medical background, it’s oftentimes difficult to decipher and diagnose a condition. With so much sparse medical information available at our fingertips via the web – some of it through unreliable online forums, some of it through reputable sites like WebMD -, it’s also easy to mistake a fairly simple ailment for a much more complex one.

To better navigate these choppy seas of medical jargon, a medical iPhone app called Symptom MD by Self Care Decisions, LLC, is my choice of medical know-how for the layman. Many medical apps like iTriage, First Aid, Epocrates and WebMd offer almost too much information, inundating the viewer with details on symptoms, treatment plans, pharmaceuticals, and almost no information on how to distinguish between various conditions with symptomatic similarities. Possibly the greatest thing about Physicians most people take for granted is their position of authority, their booming voice of reason and direction for patients to unfalteringly follow. A great weakness of apps like iTriage is they provide no direction for the user, allowing all kinds of cerebral manifestations to muddle and possibly misinterpret to the wrong diagnosis.

To truly make a medical app more user-friendly and directional, it really should be – I guess you could say – whittled down to baby steps. Symptom MD bases its entire diagnosing process on searching by symptoms, allowing you to instinctively search for specific body areas, for a child or adult, where the symptoms are located. The search function covers all the body areas – head or brain, eye, ear, nose, mouth or teeth, neck or back, chest, abdomen, genitals or urinary, arm or leg, skin, and “other symptoms” category that covers mostly baby-related issues – and after selecting a body area, you are given a list of possible symptoms associated with this area. If you select “chest,” for a child, you are presented with the possibility of an asthma attack, chest pain, cough, croup, influenza, or wheezing (other than asthma). The app then leads you on a step-by-step questionnaire regarding symptom definitions [e.g. “Is this your child’s symptom” – pain or discomfort in the chest (front or back)]; you select the appropriate pathways and depending on what other symptoms you deem accurate, the app will recommend you to either call 911 immediately, call your doctor now or go to an ER, call your doctor within 24 hours, call your doctor during the weekday, or recommend you to administer self care at home. For the more urgent requests, the app will link you to a “Call Your Doctor” button, where, obviously, you have the nice option of saving your Physician’s information.

Symptom MD also includes other pertinent and helpful information, such as the dosage information on several common drugs – Acetaminophen, Diphenhydramine, Chloropheniramine, Dextromethorphan, Ibuprofen, Pseudoephedrine – and also covers special topics like Cough and Cold Medicines of 2009, Fever Myths and Facts, Infection Exposure Questions, etc. There is also a handy direct button to cal 911 or your local emergency room.

While your doctor’s advice and your good judgment should always take precedence over any guidelines, having Symptom MD for $2.99 can help you make clearer decisions. For those times when you’re not sure what to do when you twist your ankle, or if you should be concerned about the sinus congestion that has lingered for longer than three days, Symptom MD helps you make appropriate decisions on what level of medical care is needed, and how to provide symptom relief for minor illnesses and injuries at home.

*Medical authors for Symptom MD are David A. Thompson, M.D., F.A.C.E.P for Adult content and Barton D. Schmitt, M.D., F.A.A.P. for Pediatric content.