Students studying to become doctors find all sorts of ways to subdue the stress of school.

They hike mountains, dance to hip-hop music, surf and take long trips on bicycles.

But Michael Fujinaka is different. The second-year UCSD School of Medicine student spends his free time developing applications for iPhones. His first effort — an app called iMurmur that helps medical staffers learn how to detect troubling heartbeats — has become a big success.

Within a couple of days of its July 14 launch, the software shot to No. 2 on the list of best-selling medical apps on iTunes, the online store operated by iPhone maker Apple. It has remained in the top five ever since.

More than 10,000 iPhone users around the world have downloaded the program, and 800 more add it to their devices each week.

“All of my friends and I have stethoscopes, but we don't really learn to use them until the third or fourth year of school,” Fujinaka said. “I thought if there was something I could do to train people to use them, that would be helpful.

“If you're carrying around your iPhone on a bus, why shouldn't you get a leg up on this?”

Fujinaka, 25, and his partner in the venture, former University of California San Diego economics student Alan Gardner, also 25, are cashing in on the explosion of smart-phone technology among doctors, nurses and other medical professionals.

Although medical apps account for less than 17 percent of the 85,000 programs available through iTunes from third-party developers, the category is growing rapidly.

More physicians are using iPhones to quickly reference medical information, calculate drug dosages, keep abreast of the latest research and practice skills used when caring for patients.

Smart phones and other portable computing devices long ago replaced pagers in most doctors' lab coats.

But over the past year, iPhones have proliferated in the medical field and pushed aside many of the earlier high-tech competitors, Dr. Cameron Powell said.

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