I have always suspected that one reason that physicians don’t critically appraise articles is that the criteria for critical appraisal are not readily available in a convenient, easy to use package. No more. I, with the help of some undergraduate computer science students, have created a critical appraisal app for Android devices. Its in the Google playstore and will be listed in the Amazon app store. Hopefully will develop an iOS version if this version is successful.

I tried to take critical appraisal to the next step by “scoring” each study and giving an estimate of the bias in the study. I then make a recommendation of whether or not the user should trust the study or reject it and look for another study. I think one of the shortcomings of the Users’ Guides series is that no direction is given to the user about what to do with the article after you critically appraise it. EBM Rater will give a suggestion about the trustworthiness of the study.

EBM Rater contains criteria to critically appraise all the major study designs including noninferiority studies. It even contains criteria to evaluate surrogate endpoints, composite endpoints, and subgroup effects.

Finally, it contains standard EBM calculators like NNT, NNH, and posttest probability. I added 2 unique calculators that I have not seen in any other app: patients specific NNT and NNH. Many of our patients are sicker or healthier that the patients included in a study.  NNTs and NNHs are typically calculated with data from a study so the NNT and NNH is for the study patients. With my calculator you can figure out your individual patient’s NNT or NNH.

I hope you will give it a try and give me some feedback.