Price: $1.99    Score: 9/10    By Michael Essany

AbbStore, a new app from Wouter Veldhuis, is a one-stop shop for any medical definition, abbreviation, and acronym that even the most accomplished hypochondriac can think of.

By far the most comprehensive and efficient of any application offering a searchable medical database, AbbStore allows users to search, add, edit, and save thousands of medical abbreviations and acronyms. Version 1.2 will even contain an extensive list of medical eponyms.

Perhaps the most impressive attribute of the app, which will run you $1.99, is the ease with which a user can access and archive an impressive slate of researched findings. Best of all, in the new version 1.1., users can backup/restore the abbreviation database to any computer through a WiFi connection regardless of whether the computer has iTunes. A web browser is all that’s needed – a particularly astute functionality given that many older users who don’t have iTunes can at least have a friend or loved one transfer AbbStore findings to a computer for their review.

Additional key features include:

• App comes with a preinstalled Base List of medical abbreviations
• All abbreviations are editable, deletable
• Fully transparent internet searches
• Also browse Google or Wikipedia directly from within the app
• Switch between searching for abbreviation or searching within definitions with a single click
• Base List can be disabled or even completely deleted to only search User abbreviations

For now, the only alternative to the function served by AbbStore is to sit at one’s computer and manually Google the terms or acronyms you’re looking for. Instead of what could be a long, drawn-out, time-consuming process, this handy app simplifies and expedites the search process exponentially.

Before I tried it, I thought I would never have a need for AbbStore.  But since deciding last weekend that I would probably never use it, I’ve opened the app at least a dozen times.

It isn’t flashy, it isn’t colorful, and it certainly isn’t entertaining. But it’s a valuable app that provides in a straightforward fashion the service it was designed to provide. Overall, it’s an impressive and surprisingly useful app that everyone should have on their iPhone for reference purposes or to help someone else looking for more info about practically any medical definition, abbreviation, and acronym known to exist.

AbbStore requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later and is compatible with both iPhone and iPod Touch.