Med Standards

Review by eFreeware

Med Standards is a reference app for military medical standards, published by KP Apps, LLC. It collects the special duty medical standards of the US Air Force, Army and Navy, along with supporting tools for aerospace medicine work, in a single Android app. The reason to consider it is simple: the documents a flight surgeon or aerospace medicine professional reaches for most often are gathered in one place instead of scattered across separate sources.

The app has been available since January 2019 and was last updated in September 2025. It is free, carries no ads and offers no in-app purchases. That combination is unusual for a niche professional reference, and it shapes what the app is: a working tool rather than a product trying to sell you something.

Built for aerospace medicine work

The app is written for people whose job involves special duty medical evaluations: flight surgeons, aerospace medicine professionals and the staff who support them. The documents it carries are the ones that govern whether someone is medically fit for flight or other special duty, so the audience is narrow by design. If your work touches those decisions, the app is aimed at you; if it does not, most of what it contains will not apply.

What appeals to me is the focus. Rather than trying to be a general medical reference, the app sticks to the standards and documents that this specific field relies on. That makes it the sort of tool you keep on a phone for quick reference when a question comes up away from a desk.

The developer also invites questions, concerns and suggestions by email, which suggests the document set is treated as something that can be corrected and extended over time.

Air Force documents and tools

The Air Force material is the largest part of the app. It includes AFI 48-123 on medical examinations and standards, AFI 10-203 on duty limiting conditions, the Air Force Waiver Guide and the Medical Standards Directory. Those four cover much of the ground a flight surgeon needs when assessing fitness and waivers.

Medication reference is handled separately, with the Aerospace Medicine Approved Medication List, the MOD Approved Medication List and the OTC Approved Medication List. Having the approved medication lists alongside the standards documents is a practical pairing, since medication questions come up constantly in waiver and fitness decisions.

Beyond the core documents, the app carries 45 other flight-medicine-relevant AFIs and documents, plus 13 RSV sample briefings. It also includes an altitude oxygen converter calculator for aeromedical evacuations, which is the one interactive tool in the set rather than a document to read.

Army and Navy references

The Army section is smaller but covers the essentials. It includes AR 40-501 on standards of medical fitness, a flight surgeon checklist for aeromedical policy letters and technical bulletins, and a physical examination requirements table. Between them, these give a flight surgeon the fitness standard, the checklist to work through and the table of what a given examination requires.

The Navy material consists of the Navy Aeromedical Reference and Waiver Guide and Navy ManMed Chapter 15. For anyone working with Navy aeromedical cases, those two are the reference points that matter most.

Having all three services in one app is the feature that sets it apart from keeping a folder of PDFs. The developer says new document versions are added once a month, so the app is meant to stay current rather than being a one-time snapshot of the standards.

What it costs

The app is free to install. There are no ads, and there are no in-app purchases.

That makes the decision unusually straightforward for a professional reference. There is nothing to weigh against how often you would use it while you are reading a standards document.

The most recent update listed is a set of bug fixes, which is a modest but normal kind of maintenance for an app whose main job is to hold and display documents.

How it compares with other options

The obvious alternative is keeping the same documents as PDFs or bookmarks, either on a phone or on a computer. That approach works, but it means tracking down each service's current version yourself and keeping the files organized. The app's value is in doing that gathering for you and updating the set monthly.

A general medical reference app is another comparison point, but those tend to cover clinical medicine broadly rather than the special duty standards and waiver guides that this field depends on. The overlap would be small.

The trade-off is that the app is only as good as the documents it carries and how promptly they are refreshed. Someone who needs the very latest revision the moment it is published may still want to check the source directly. For most day-to-day reference, though, a single app covering all three services is the more convenient arrangement.

A focused reference for flight medicine

Med Standards does one job: it puts the Air Force, Army and Navy medical standards and flight-medicine documents in one free Android app. It has been around since 2019, it is updated with new document versions monthly, and the 4.2 average from 48 ratings suggests it has found a working audience among the people it was built for.

It suits flight surgeons, aerospace medicine professionals and anyone whose work involves special duty medical evaluations, waivers or approved medication lists. If that describes your work, the app is a sensible thing to have on your phone. If it does not, the material here is unlikely to be of much use to you.

The straightforward setup removes the usual reasons to hesitate. For the audience it targets, this is a reference worth installing.

What's new in version 2.1.1

Bug fixes