During our update to version 3.0.5 in December 2014 we have been asked by Apple to remove several formulas that were infringing on Apple's dose calculator rule:
22.9 Apps that calculate medicinal dosages must be submitted by the manufacturer of those medications or recognized institutions such as hospitals, insurance companies, and universities.
Update September 2016: The rule has been moved to 1.4 Physical Harm and is now more extensive.
Although we contest that this rule applies to a generic medical calculator like MedCalc, which didn't provide specific drug dosage information, we had no choice but to comply and remove the offending formulas. The alternative would have been the removal of MedCalc from the App Store.
We're obviously not happy about this situation because it means that long-time users that have come to depend on those formulas will be impacted upon updating the app, without any warning and with no way of getting back to the previous version. To those users we apologize and want to stress that we did everything we could to prevent this scenario, to no avail.
We appreciate that this rule is meant to protect users from getting dangerous drug dosage advice from untrusted third-parties. However, we believe that it is too broad in that it impacts tools that merely multiply a user-provided dose by body weight, as was the case in our dose calculator that brought the review team's attention to MedCalc. A lot of independent software developers are endangered by this rule. Most of them individuals – many are doctors, nurses and paramedics – developing tools for iOS out of passion for their work and a desire to help out colleagues by distributing their Apps on the App Store. A broad and strict application of this rule, together with not accepting any kind of certification for the creation of such tools, will directly threaten a whole segment of the healthcare app ecosystem.
App Store rules are always in flux. If you want Apple's position on the matter to evolve in a way more favorable for the healthcare app ecosystem, you can voice your concerns about this rule in general, and the impact it had on MedCalc (and many other independent apps) in particular.
Again, we apologize to our users and hope to find a better solution in the future.
MedCalc, February 2015