We know that occupational therapists have a lot on their plate. You’re busy seeing patients, working with them to improve their quality of life, and keeping up with all the paperwork that goes along with the job.
And you’re also managing the business of your practice: maintaining all the records, scheduling appointments, and making sure everything runs smoothly.
Not to mention that all of us have personal lives outside our work that we need to balance, too! Sometimes it feels like there just aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything done.
That’s where technology can come in handy. When you find the right apps for occupational therapy, they can help you manage your work and your life more efficiently. We’ve curated this list of apps for OTs that are great for both patient care and practice management.
Best Apps For Occupational Therapists
The 11 Best Occupational Therapy Apps of 2020
Kellie C. Murphy
By: Kellie C. Murphy
Aug 25, 2021
Male patient sitting on yoga mat using OT app on ipad
We use smartphones for everything in life: Organizing tasks, paying bills, shopping — the list goes on and on. But did you know that your clients can now use their smartphones to continue the progress they make during your sessions — but on their own time? Believe it or not, there’s a growing list of OT-related apps out there that are specifically designed to help you improve your clients’ skill development and functioning, even when they’re at home. To help you out, we scoured the Apple App and Google Play stores to find the best OT apps on the market right now. Take a look at the list below to see if there are any that might work for your clients’ needs.
Best OT App for Visual Perception
- Flow Free
Available for Download On: Apple App Store | Google Play
Price: Free
Why You’ll Love It: This app is great for OTs working with patients who have depth- and color-perception issues. It’s an addictive puzzle game that involves connecting colors to cover the entire board. Play is free through hundreds of levels, and the difficulty ranges from casual to challenging. This app offers a very colorful, smooth user interface, fun sound effects, and clean animated graphics.
Best OT Apps for Developing Motor Skills - Fun Bubbles
Available for Download On: Apple App Store(iPhone and iPad only)
Price: $0.99
Why You’ll Love It: This app is great for helping children develop their fine motor skills. What’s even better is that they absolutely love it! In fact, the app developer created it for the specific purpose of entertaining his own toddler. Although it does have ads, the app has been positively reviewed among adults who say it’s relaxing and fun to play, both for their children and themselves. This one is particularly well-suited for OTs working with children or adults who have anxiety and/or ADHD. - Cookie Doodle
Available for Download On: Apple App Store (iPhone and iPad only)
Price: $0.99
Why You’ll Love It: Cookie Doodle uses the baking process to help children hone their motor skills. It also helps them work on sequencing and creativity, as well as word and picture association. This app gets rave reviews from users, as well as from bloggers and digital publications like Examiner.com, Crowdedbrain, and Dad Aesthetic. On top of that, the app was a Parent’s Choice Foundation award winner and a favorite in Martha Stewart’s magazine. If your child doesn’t love cookies, there are other baked good versions out there, too, including Cake Doodle, Donut Doodle, and Tie Dye Doodle.
Best OT App for Handwriting - Dexteria
Available for Download On: Apple App Store | Google Play
Price: $3.99 ($2.99 for Dexteria Jr.)
Why You’ll Love It: Dexteria offers a variety of hand exercises that help support the development of fine motor skills and handwriting readiness in both children and adults. It also helps adults who have suffered some kind of injury rebuild those skills. There’s also a version geared toward children who are just learning how to write: it’s called Dexteria Jr. Both apps use cool animation and graphics, sound effects, and music to create an engaging experience as the user works on honing their handwriting skills.
Best OT Apps for Communication Skills - Dragon Anywhere: Dictate Now
Available for Download On: Apple App Store | Google Play
Price: Monthly subscription, $14.99 | Annual subscription, $149.99
Why You’ll Love It: True to its name, Dragon Anywhere is innovative dictation software that allows the user to speak into a microphone and have their words transcribed into a document. This app is particularly useful for those clients who can’t type on keyboards easily — or at all — most notably, those who suffer from repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome. Dragon Anywhere is based on “Dragon Naturally Speaking” speech recognition technology from Nuance Communications, and is the same technology used for Apple’s Siri. The app was ranked the number one business productivity app in Apple’s iTunes App Store. The only downside is that the app requires you to have an Internet connection in order to use it. - Constant Therapy
Available for Download On: Apple App Store | Google Play
Price: Free (In-app purchases available)
Why You’ll Love It: Constant Therapy is an award-winning speech therapy app for people who are coping with a variety of speech, language, and cognitive disorders caused by stroke or traumatic brain injuries. The app allows users to develop and hone a different skills, including speech, language, cognition, memory, reading, attention, and comprehension — anytime, anywhere. Users can set up goal-setting prompts and personalized tasks, and track their progress on their performance dashboard.
Best OT Apps for Clients’ Self-Care - Occubuzz
Available for Download On: Apple App Store (iPhone and iPad only)
Price: Free
Why You’ll Love It: Occubuzz helps OTAs and OTs gauge their clients’ ability to manage day-to-day activities prior to their first session. The app uses plain language and simple terms to assess a user’s status when it comes to feelings like burnout, depression, and anxiety. It also provides the user with tips on what to do and how to address routine personal needs in a down-to-earth way. It’s worth noting that users must sign up for a membership first in order to use the app. - Lumosity
Available for Download On: Apple App Store | Google Play
Price: Free (In-app purchases available)
Why You’ll Love It: Lumosity, dubbed a “brain-training” app, was developed by a team of scientists and designers who transformed cognitive and neuropsychological tasks into games and puzzles that challenge users’ core cognitive skills – specifically, memory, attention, speed, flexibility and problem-solving. The app is used by over 100 million people worldwide and includes over 50 different activities for users to try. At the beginning, you’ll be prompted to do a free 10-minute Fit Test, which provides you with baseline scores for different cognitive skills. If you buy into the subscription, you can gain access to curated sets of games based on those scores and the types of skills you’d like to work on. The app can even track your performance across the various activities and provide you with insights into your strengths and weaknesses. - Rehab Coach: CVA Stroke Rehabilitation Recovery
Available for Download On: Google Play
Price: Free
Why You’ll Love It: This app is designed for patients beginning their rehabilitation from a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). It contains several exercises like alphabet and vowel relearning, math exercises, color recognition, memory games, quantity assessment, and facial exercises (for those clients who suffer from expressive aphasia).
Best OT App for Professional Development - MedBridge
Available for Download On: Apple App Store | Google Play
Price: Free (Yearly subscription also available)
Why You’ll Love It: MedBridge provides OTs, PTs, and speech-language pathologists with a comprehensive education platform to help them expand their knowledge, engage patients, and improve outcomes with an evidence-based online curriculum. This app allows users to access a profile and a course catalog to uncover new courses. If you buy into the yearly subscription, you’ll gain access to home exercise programming and patient education tools as well.
Best OT App for Students - OT Pocket Prep
Available for Download On: Apple App Store | Google Play
Price: Free (In-app purchases available)
Why You’ll Love It: Pocket Prep is an award-winning mobile learning and exam preparation tool specifically geared toward helping you study for the Occupational Therapist Registered (OTR) exam. With the app, you can study anywhere, anytime, directly from a mobile device. Overloading the brain with too much information at once is a common study mistake, and research shows that smaller, more frequent study sessions are the key to retaining information. OT Pocket Prep provides you with short quizzes on the go, and users can interact with each other to ask questions and support each other through the studying process.
visual tracking apps
It is often difficult to get children to do vision therapy exercises, but if you can find an app that they love, you might be able to engage them for longer than prescribed. The following apps help with different visual tasks.
NOTE: Please talk to your vision therapist before engaging in app use. These apps do affect the eyes, so you want to make sure they work in tandem with vision therapy instead of working against it.
- Bugs and Buttons: iTunes
This is a fun game that helps children build visual tracking and visual motor skills. - Captain Lazy Eye: iTunes
Developed in conjunction with optometrists, this app helps develop visual acuity plus helps to correct amblyopia (lazy eye). - Cut the Buttons HD: iTunes
This app lets kids play with scissors while developing visual motor abilities. - Dexteria: iTunes
This app helps you develop visual-motor integration skills. - Eye Movement Training: iTunes
This app helps with tracking and teaming. - Engaging Eyes: PC Computer
This program provides a whole suite of apps to help with visual processing difficulties, including: eye tracking, fixation, and focusing. - Highlights Hidden Pictures: iTunes
Based off the popular magazine, these find-the-picture games help children develop figure ground and visual discrimination skills. - Letter Cross Tracking: iTunes | Android
The child has to look across to find the right letters to play the game. This helps develop tracking skills needed for reading. - LetterReflex: iTunes
This apps helps a child overcome letter reversals and backwards writing. - Look Again (Lite): iTunes
Finding the right shape is the goal of this game, and it helps to develop visual discrimination, scanning, figure ground and scanning skills. - Matrix Game 3: iTunes
A more challenging matching game, Matrix Game 3 helps children develop spatial relations, form constancy and visual discrimination. - One Minute Mania: iTunes
A quick, find-the-object game, this helps children develop visual discrimination and scanning skills. - Piano Tiles: iTunes | Android
Not specifically created for visual issues, but doctors recommend this app because it helps with tracking and saccades development. - Pickup Sticks: iTunes
Helps to develop figure-ground visual perception. - P.O.V. for Spatial Reasoning: iTunes
Through manipulating opjects on your iPad, you can help your eyes develop spatial relationship skills which will improve your spatial reasoning. - Simon Says: iTunes
A play on the traditional in-person game, the app tells kids what to do and they follow along. This helps them develop visual sequencing memory and visual memory. - Vision Tap: iTunes
This app contains several games that help with various visual tasks including eye-hand coordination, tracking and teaming. - Visual Attention Therapy (LIte): iTunes
Originally created for stroke and brain injury survivors, this app is a great tool for helping to develop focus, visual scanning and visual discrimination.
Conclusion
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