(Winston-Salem, N.C.) Have no fear during holiday travel this year — if you’re in a strange city, feel flu-like symptoms coming on and want to find a doctor, there’s a new iPhone App that will find one for you. The i Need a Doctor™ (www.ineedadoc.net) app is a joint venture between The Paladin Group LLC, the app developer, and two of the most respected doctor-rating services in the United States — the health care research organization Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. (www.castleconnolly.com) and the physician rating site DrScore (www.drscore.com).

“i Need a Doctor™ is the only app that brings together the powerful databases from nationally recognized rating organizations in a real-time, user-friendly application,” said Ralph DiSibio, CEO of Paladin, LLC, the app developer. “The app helps everyone from people who need a doctor when they are away from home to those who are searching for a top doctor in a particular specialty to those who are trying to help aging parents in a distant city find medical help.”

i Need a Doctor™ can be purchased for $4.99 from the Apple iTunes Store. Users open the application, enter a zip code location and choose from more than 100 specialties. A list of doctors appears with an icon next to each; when you touch a doctor’s name, the vitals appear, including years of practice, schools attended, address and phone number. Touching the phone number gives the user the ability to automatically place the call, and touching the Google icon brings up a map and directions to the office.

“Smart phones, in particular the iPhone, are putting more and more information at people’s fingertips,” said Dr. Feldman, founder of the online physician rating site DrScore.com. “The i Need a Doctor™ app is a welcome tool in a world where people are moving around constantly and utilizing the internet as a primary source of information, and it is the only app that offers information on nearly 800,000 doctors and includes patient ratings and ‘top doctor’ designations.”

In addition to accessing the basic doctor information, the user can access any patient ratings the doctor has and whether he or she has been designated a “Top Doctor,” a designation determined by Castle Connolly’s established survey and research process. “We’re pleased to have been able to create this new, vital iPhone app in conjunction with Paladin and DrScore,” said John J. Connolly, Ed.D., Castle Connolly’s President and CEO. “Our three companies are committed to enabling all consumers to be able to easily and effectively find quality information about doctors — wherever they are, whatever the need, and whenever they need it.”

DiSibio decided to pursue development of a physician locator app after recognizing the need during his business travels. “For four decades, I have traveled extensively, and I realized that the smart phone affords travelers of all types — business, vacation, relocation, student travelers — the ability to find qualified medical assistance when local knowledge was unavailable. In my search to find the very best organizations that had access to those doctors, I found Castle Connolly and DrScore, and I knew that together we could develop an app that would be of great value to the general public and a leap forward in the marriage between medicine and telecommunications.”

“Our three organizations share a common value,” DiSibio continued, “which is that everyone deserves access to the best medical care that our country has to offer. More than anything, that value brought us together.”

The Paladin Group LLC was founded in 2006 by Ralph DiSibio, an executive with four decades of leadership experience including service as president of business units of Fortune 500 companies. The corporation’s entry into the burgeoning “app” market marks a natural evolutionary step in its work to better the nation’s quality of life by improving access to the health care industry. i Need A Doctor™ is the first of several, readily-accessible applications for mobile technology.

Castle Connolly Medical Ltd. was founded in 1991 by John K. Castle, Chairman, and John J. Connolly, Ed.D., President and CEO. It achieves its mission to be America’s trusted and authoritative source for identifying top doctors and top hospitals through publication of its acclaimed Top Doctors guides, such as America’s Top Doctors®, and its online Top Doctors database. Under the direction of its physician-led research team, Castle Connolly annually surveys tens of thousands of physicians and the medical leadership of hospitals across the country in order to identify and select those physicians regarded by their peers as among the very best in their specialties and for specific diseases. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.castleconnolly.com.

Founded by Steve Feldman, M.D., a practicing dermatologist, DrScore.com is an interactive online survey site where patients can rate their physicians, as well as find a physician based on their service level preference. DrScore’s mission is to improve medical care by giving patients a forum for rating their physicians, and by giving doctors an affordable, objective, non-intrusive means of documenting the quality of care that they provide. For more information, visit www.drscore.com.