UpToDate vs ARF RHD Guidelines
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
UpToDate
This medical app provides clinicians with evidence-based decision support, featuring AI-powered conversational guidance, comprehensive clinical content, and practice-changing updates. It offers tools for patient education, drug reference, and clinical calculations to enhance care delivery and patient outcomes.
- Expert AI conversational guidance
- Gold standard clinical content
- Practice-changing updates
- Patient education leaflets
- Drug reference & interactions
- Clinical calculators
- Kidney dosing guidance
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UpToDate is the clinical decision support solution trusted by over 3M healthcare professionals to help improve care delivery and patient outcomes. Now powered by UpToDate Expert AI, a generative AI experience built on rigorously maintained UpToDate clinical intelligence to delivers fast, clinically grounded answers through a conversational interface. Expert AI, available in select packages and applications, brings together the latest evidence and real-world clinical expertise and provides transparent sourcing, embedded guardrails, and oversight, supporting clinical reasoning and helping clinicians make confident, informed decisions. Key features include: • Expert AI: Conversational guidance that mirrors how clinicians think. • Gold Standard Clinical Content: Clinician-authored clinical intelligence and graded recommendation, enriched with clinical algorithms, graphics, videos, and continuously updated to reflect the latest evidence and clinical care experience. • Practice-Changing Updates: Timely insights that reflect the latest evidence and how it impacts patient care. • Patient Education: Thousands of patient education leaflets in up to 19 different languages to improve patient understanding and support care plan adherence. • Key Points Panels: Quick, clinically actionable guidance to help clinicians avoid common diagnostic and treatment errors embedded in UpToDate search results. • Drug Reference & Interactions: Evidence-based drug monographs and interaction analysis to support safe and informed prescribing decisions. • Clinical Calculators: Over 200 tools to support dosing, risk scoring, and patient assessments. • Rx Transitions: Step-by-step support for switching antidepressants safely. • Kidney Dosing: Drug dosing guidance for patients with renal impairment. Available on mobile, desktop, and integrated into EHRs, ensuring you can access UpToDate’s trusted guidance where and when you need it. Access to features will vary depending on your UpToDate account. Expert AI is now available in personal trainee subscriptions and UpToDate Pro Plus subscriptions in the US, and through select Enterprise Edition accounts. To get access, explore personal subscription options on the UpToDate website or contact your Enterprise account lead. This app is designed for use by medical professionals. If you are not a medical professional, please consult a qualified healthcare provider before making any medical decisions.
ARF RHD Guidelines
This app provides clinicians with up-to-date evidence and guidance for diagnosing and managing acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. It includes a diagnostic calculator based on global criteria to simplify complex algorithms.
- Diagnosis and management of ARF/RHD
- Up-to-date evidence-based information
- ARF Diagnosis Calculator
- Global diagnostic criteria compliance
- Published by RHDAustralia
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Rheumatic heart disease represents the greatest cardiovascular inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. From 2013 to 2017, 94% of all new rheumatic heart disease cases were among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This app assists clinicians in the diagnosis and management of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. Published by RHDAustralia, based at Menzies School of Health Research, the app contains the most up-to-date evidence and details various aspects of patient care. It is informed by the 2020 Australian guideline for prevention, diagnosis and management of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease (3rd edition), available at https://www.rhdaustralia.org.au/arf-rhd-guideline. The app also contains an ARF Diagnosis Calculator which embeds the lengthy and complex ARF diagnosis algorithms into a series of simple questions that assist clinicians to diagnose ARF. The algorithms comply with the 2015 American Heart Association revision of the Jones Criteria for diagnosis of ARF, which has been endorsed by the World Heart Federation, making the Diagnosis Calculator now able to be used globally.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: ARF RHD Guidelines at 100% against UpToDate's 28%. ARF RHD Guidelines also leads on rating (5.0 vs 3.6) and iOS requirement (13.0 vs 18.0). UpToDate's advantage is update cadence (every 2 months vs every 16 months) and ratings volume (587 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
ARF RHD Guidelines holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.6. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: UpToDate has 587 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 28% of UpToDate's written reviews are positive against 100% of ARF RHD Guidelines's.
UpToDate ships an update every 2 months, ARF RHD Guidelines every 16 months. The most recent releases landed on November 13, 2026 and November 1, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | UpToDate | ARF RHD Guidelines |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.6 (587 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 28.4% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 587 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months — better | Every 16 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 13.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 56 MB | 9 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 12+ |
| Developer | UpToDate, Inc. | Menzies School of Health Research |
Customer experience
UpToDate
ARF RHD Guidelines
Bugs and requests
UpToDate
Reported bugs
3 issues- Inability to download offline content
- Constant need to re-authenticate
- Incompatibility with recent iOS updates
Requested features
3 requests- Highlight and annotate content
- Improved institutional login support
- Dark mode and font size options
ARF RHD Guidelines
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
UpToDate
No in-app purchases
ARF RHD Guidelines
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is UpToDate free?
Is ARF RHD Guidelines free?
Which has better reviews, UpToDate or ARF RHD Guidelines?
Do UpToDate or ARF RHD Guidelines have ads?
Which is updated more often, UpToDate or ARF RHD Guidelines?
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