The backers of a newly launched iOS app that offers daily information for mental health professionals claim it is a time-saving and cheaper alternative to existing medical journals. The Mental Elf app costs only a one-off fee of £3.

The company behind the app is called Minervation and says the app gives one piece of essential information per day. They characterise the alternative to their summary service as reading around 20 medical journal articles taking six hours per day. In terms of cost, they say the nearest rival is a quarterly journal published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) which has an annual subscription of £109.  

Minervation describes itself as a design, technology and social media consultancy that produces healthcare information. The company was set up in 2002 as a spin-off from Oxford University.

The company is working on an Android version of the Mental Elf app that will be launched later this year as well as an app spin-off from its existing National Elf websites.