The Palmdoc Chronicles

Sunday, June 29, 2003

New Herbal eBooks from Skyscape
The 5-Minute Herb and Dietary Supplement Consult is now available in PDA format for quick, easy reference in any clinical setting. This unique handheld reference provides instant access to reliable information on herbs, minerals, vitamins, amino acids, probiotics, enzymes, over-the-counter hormones, and other dietary supplements commonly used by consumers. Health care professionals can quickly find a supplement by searching an A-to-Z list and get succinct information on claims, indications, scientific evidence, benefits, adverse effects, contraindications, drug interactions, and dosage, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.

Organized by herbal product, Drug Interaction Facts: Herbal Supplements and Food allows the health professional to answer consumers' questions regarding safety issues concerning possible drug-herb and drug-food interactions. It includes over 100 monographs and discusses the interactions' significance, onset, severity, documentation, mechanism, and more. References are also included.
Pulse Oximetry on a PDA
Dolphin Medical Systems has an interesting product called the Voyager Pulse Oximeter which converts a PDA into a portable pulse oximeter.

I think this is an interesting product and will be useful for physicians armed with PDAs who can check the SaO2 on the spot themselves.

The specifications look nice but the obvious flaw here is it supports only Windows CE :P. Hopefully Dolphin Medical will come to their senses and support the better PDA platform i.e. PalmOS!!

Saturday, June 28, 2003

The recent JNC-7 Hypertension Guidelines have been released for free download at Handango by Redi-Reference.
You can opt to use their reader or else you can also use iSilo (at least version 3.0)
Author's description:
JNC 7 Clinical Guidelines is a Palm OS version of the new Standard Hypertension Guidelines, easy-to-use, and easy to find the detailed information that you are looking for.
Requirements:20 kb for Guidelines, and 300 kb for RediReader (usable with all RediReference Products)

Only 20Kb and free. What more can you ask for :). To read more on the guidelines, you can surf over to the NIH website


Tuesday, June 24, 2003

More on Palm Biorhythms
Those looking for a freeware graphical Biorhythms program can now download Palm Biorhythms v2.0 from Freewarepalm.com
Brian's Biorhythms website has more info on the program he wrote.
I am also amazed he has taken the trouble to write a User Guidefor this program! Way to go Brian!!








Asian Food database update
Humanjoy, a KVPUGger has contributed a MobileDB version of the database. You can download the latest version here. I don't have MobileDB so please let me know if there are problems with it.
Asian Food Calorie Counter Screenshots
I have updated the database to refine the views further. You can download it here
Here are some screenshots of the Asian Food Calorie counter Handbase database......
1) View by food category











2) Detailed view of an individual food item











3) View of selected food items











4) Running report on calories consumed











5) Report view











Ladymate 1.4

Ladymate 1.4 has been updated to support OS5.

Author's Application Description:
This program is useful to women who want natural family planing or avoiding pregnancy. You can detect the ovulation through menstrual cycle and indicators of fertility (bacal body temperature, cervical mucus and cervical changes).

Haven't reviewed this myself but two reviews in PAlmgear give it a 5 star rating.
My MedBox 2.6

Now this is a simple software to keep track of your medicines so that you won't end up with a cupboardful of expired tablets. Looks like a good idea and quite reasonably priced too.
Author's Application Description:
How many times when you need to take some medicine and find out you forget to refill it in your medicine box or it is expired. This simple to use program will keep track the inventory in your medicine box and expiry date for each medicine. So you know when you need to be refill or use it before it is expired
Download My Medbox 2.6 from Palmgear.

Monday, June 23, 2003

Asian Foods - Calorie and food content database

I am not aware of any resource available for the Palm. Most of the diet software for the Palm contains food information relevant to Western diets. There was this discussion on KVPUG initiated by some lady KVPUG members interested in this topic. PurpleLily found a Singapore resource with dietary information on Singapore/Malaysian/Asian food items. I thought it would be very useful to convert it to Palm format for easy reference.
I have converted the data in HanDbase format available for download from my page of useful Malaysian stuff for your PDA.
If you just want the file, you can download it here.
I would appreciate some feed back so let me know what you think.

Sunday, June 22, 2003

Anesthesia Case Log 1.20

Ravindra Prasad has updated his Anesthesia Case Log applet for HanDbase.
Author's description:
Case log for anesthesiologists (and a better one than the RCA version, if I do say so myself!). Tracks patient information, procedures done, complications, postops, and a whole lot more! Lots of data is already provided, to facilitate picking from lists. This is a work in progress ... additions/comments are welcome!
Version: 1.2, 6/17/03 For the search engine: case log, postop log, case tracker, anesthesiology, anesthesia, anaesthesia, anaesthesiology

Saturday, June 21, 2003

An Introduction To Yoga

The budding Yoga practitioners may want to check out this free book "An Introduction To Yoga", by Annie Besant in iSilo3 eBook format.

Ommmmmmmmmm........

Thursday, June 19, 2003

Tungsten C for Doctors
Palm Bouelevard has a piece about Indiana-based St. Mary's Health System purchasing 130 Tungsten Cs for use by doctors.
"We selected the Tungsten C handheld after looking at solutions from Dell and HP. We found that Palm, combined with MercuryMD, truly provides the most reliable platform," said Dennis DeMasie, chief information officer of St. Mary's. "Our physicians need a handheld device that maps closely to our hospital's mission, which includes giving patients the most comprehensive care possible. Fast access to up-to-date records raises the quality of care while saving physicians time."
Impressive. I have had some hands-on experience with the Tungsten C as a colleague of mine got one recently. We do have WiFi at work and it was a cinch to set it up. Our network has 128bit WEP encryption and MAC filtering and it didn't take long to get all the parameters right (less than 15 minutes). Have another colleague with an iPaq 5450 and after a week we still haven't been able to login! How on earth does one figure out the MAC number for the 5450? THe PPC menus are so convoluted, it's as exasperating as Windows on the desktop!!

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Harrison's Principles Of Internal Medicine 15th Edition
Spotted Harrison's Full Text in Memoware.com
It has apparently been updated 16 June 2003 with new inter-paragraph links.
I also could not spot a price tag. Could it be that the venerable text is available for free? It's in Mobipocket format and I don't have the reader installed so I can't verify. I note that there have been over 7000 downloads. Grateful if anyone out there can tell me if it is a working copy.

Sunday, June 15, 2003

East Asian Vegetarian Recipes
Your doctor will tell you "eat more fruits and veg" as a piece of general advice. We tend to eat too much meat anyway. Spotted this new software AW East Asian Vegetarian Recipes in Handango.
Description:
East Asian Vegetarian Recipes, 129 entries. Main Course Tofu/Beancurd, Snacks and Soups, Sauces, Main Course Vegetable/Bean Dishes, Side Dishes, Salads, Pickles, Condiments, Main Course Noodle/Vegetable Dishes, Main Course Tofu/Beancurd and Tempeh, Desserts. Features include: extremely fast dictionary browsing; resident mode (word lookup from any application); expansion cards support; adjustable fonts; search within the offered definitions; and more.

Sounds yummy! But ever wondered why some Asian vegetarian dishes are made out to look like meat dishes? :0

Saturday, June 14, 2003

What no games?
MDNetguide interviewed these three physicians on "What's in your PDA" and only one admitted to having games in his. As for the other two - what no Scrabble, Chess or Bejewelled? :p
2/3 interviewed are PalmOS users, the other being a PPC. In my experience PalmOS far outnumber PPC users in the medical field.
No one interviewed me unfortunately :( but here are my favorite programs:
- Agendus
- HandBase
- SMS
- 5MCC
- A2ZDrugs
- Worldmate
- SplashId
- Stock Manager
- iSilo
- Avantgo
and games as time-killers:
- Freecell
- Scrabble
- Monopoly
- Chess genius
- Bejewelled
OnTimeRx updated
OnTimeRx is a great medication reminder and log. It has been updated to version 2.1 and also supports OS5
Application Description:
Award-winning On-Time-Rx® is a healthcare bargain at $19.95. It works equally well for people and *for pets*.
Featuring alarm reminders for each drug dose, with a remaining Days Supply on each alarm screen.
Schedule all To Do events, refill reminders, doctor appointments,
and other healthcare activities in OTRx.
With editable dropdowns throughout, On-Time-Rx® can be customized
and used in any language using the English aphabet.
It is very easy to set up and fun to use.
New features:-Beam the Trial directly from OTRx Menu
-Beam complete drug records and to do events
-Clear the Log whenever desired
-View Overall Compliance Rate on Log
-View Specific Drug Compliance Rate on Log Details
-Capture and export* Log Data toExcel or other database - requires a separate OLE Utility app.
Free Fitness Log
If you are a ThinkDb user, then you might want to check out the free Fitness Log 1.0. I am afraid I can't test it out as I am not a ThinkDb user (personally I prefer HanDbase). I hope the author can port it to other formats.

Description:
Fitness Log consists of three Smartlists that provide selection of Aerobic and Anaerobic exercises as well as a method to record general information about your fitness session. The Fitness Log Smartlist allows you to record your start and end times for a fintess session as well as view log information about past session and exercises.
The Aerobic Smartlist allows you to record information about the aerobic part of your fitness session such as what exercise (i.e, treadmill, track, elliptical, etc.), the duration, and notes.
The Anaerobic Smartlist is used in two steps:
1) Planning
2) Recording actuals.
You select exercises by muscle group from a pre-set table and assign a sequence for the exercises.
The pre-set table is in a Smartlist called Fitness Exercises and, although it is pre-loaded with exercises, weights, reps, and sets, you will probably want to customize it to fit your particular level of fitness.
While you are working out, you can select a checkbox if your planned and actual data is the same, or you can enter different actuals.
Of course, if you are constantly differetnt from the planned, you can always go to the ''Fitness Exercises'' Smartlist and change the template information.

Friday, June 13, 2003

The Palm does Biorhythms
Ah soooo. Time for some levity. Earlier on this week, I made a slight boo-boo at work (not telling you what) but thankfully all went well. Checked my Palm and lo and behold, my Intellectual cycle was "critical". Hmmm maybe that explained the brain spasm I experienced on Monday.
Anyway there are lots of Biorhythm programs out there - it's really "pseudo-science" so don't take it seriously but it can be fun.
I did write one in Cbaspad basic platform sometime ago. But I must admit it's not as cool looking as EZBiorhythm. . The blurb in Palmgear for ezBiorhythm goes like this:
Application Description:
Does your crazy life need to be managed for success? Then try out this ezBiorhythm application. And do you have a busy life that is sometimes getting in the way of your moods? Fix that problem with ezBiorhythm.
ezBiorhythm helps you to be able to scheduling and managing successfully your life using Biorhythm.

I have an idea for Palm programmers out there. Perhaps someone can come out with a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator program for the Palm. Might be useful if you are into ''Psychological Types"

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

ChemoRxPlus v0.99
Has recently been updated to support OS5.0. No wonder I could not run the earlier version on my TT which bombed out during the installation (the App forge booster setup files seemed to be looping). I might give this one another go but am wary of App forge booster - the thing it seems to "boost" is the amount of Ram it eats up!!!)
Description:
ChemoRxPlus is similar to its initial sister program ChemoRx but now allows users to add and save their own protocols and protocol notes.
The user may switch between the personal protocol database and the standard database.
New protocols will be added to the standard protocol database on a daily to weekly basis and the database may be downloaded from www.ChemoRxPlus.com.
Additionally three techniques for determining creatinine clearance (for AUC calculations) have been added.
Other new features include A) overdose alerts (by adding *) for potentially toxic doses B) expanded drug information including metabolism, renal and hepatic dosing, drug interactions, drug supplied as info, vesicant info and vesicant therapy plus usual recommended doses etc.
Because of popular demand this program will soon be available over the internet at www.ChemoRxPlus.com so patients may be dosed on the PC anywhere there is access to the internet.

Update Description:
- ChemoRxPlus version 0.99 is now compatible with Palm OS5.
- This version will be supported and protocols will be updated on www.ChemoRxPlus.com.


Sunday, June 08, 2003

Medrules 3.3
Kent Willyard aka Ectopic Brain has updated his excellent Medrules to version 3.3
MedRules is an award-winning application featuring useful clinical prediction rules taken from the medical literature.
Note:
Please install the 'NSBRuntime.prc' file included in the .zip archive in order to ensure that you're using the correct version.
This application was compiled under NS BASIC version 3.0.1, and will only work with NSBRuntime version 3.0.1; if you have other NS BASIC programs installed that require a different version of NSBRuntime, this application may crash or behave unpredictably.

Update Description:
6/5/03 Ver. 3.3:
- Expiration date removed.

You can download Medrules 3.3 from freewarepalm.com

Saturday, June 07, 2003

The hardy TT
It's nice to know my TT will survive a climb up Mount Everest. A group of intrepid scientists have climbed the peaks of Everest armed with a TT in order to test the effects of hypoxia at high altitudes on cognitive function. They used the TT's voice recording function and the MiniCOG program I blogged about earlier.
You can read the news item from Palm Boulevard.
As I don't thrive very well in temperatures below 10 degrees C, I don't think I'll put my TT to the test.... :p

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Wireless presentations
Have to give a talk on anticoagulation later this month. In the midst of preparing the usual stuff and putting it all together on Powerpoint, I thought it would be cool to be able to use the Palm as a presentation tool. No need to lug the notebook along (even though it is a "light" 1.7kg NEC Versa S260). I am aware that Margi systems has had Presenter-to-go on SD Card for sometime now but it's a wired version with cables and all - but still allows you to use your Palm as a presentation tool. Now there's this report in PalmLoyal and the Press Release from Margi about an up and coming Wireless solution for presentation using your PDA. This is way way cool and will be interesting. I personally will upgrade to the next TT with BT AND Wifi built in (with 64 MB Ram hopefully) so I look forward to ditching my notebook for those presentations/lectures.
In the meantime for this month, still have to lug my NEC along. Sigh.....

Monday, June 02, 2003

Dialyzer Compendium v1.1p
Freeware spotted which might be useful if you are a nephrologist. It's a database with info on Baxter and Fresenius dialyzers and you can add on to the database yourself. B&W as well as color version available. Download from Freewarepalm.com