User experience: Yousuf Gaffar

Yousuf Gaffar writes ine:

Hi, Thanks for the wonderful blog. I'm a senior Hematology-Oncology Fellow from Tampa, FL. I have been using PDAs since I graduated Med School in 1998. Palm III, then Visor Deluxe, then Treo 90, now Tungsten T3. In terms of programs: Calculators: Haemonc Rules (Best By Far, most useful); MedRules, Medmath (with Epocrates); Adjuvant! PDA program (adjuvantonline.com) Drug Guides: Epocrates (like updates and pricing of meds that are included); Lexi-Drugs (more info) Chemo Guides: OncoMD 04 (Comprehensive); Adverse event program from Amgen (received at Asco 2004); Chemo RX Plus (but no updates recently) Staging: AJC TNM Other: Documents to Go (ok for schedules, etc); Bonsai (for notes); Repligo (to read PDF Files, including NCCN guidelines). For Fun: Audible (great service); Pocket Tunes (best player). Anyway, I've managed to convert most of the fellows to using their device more often. I hope more MD's use their PDA to maximize their patient care, not just keeping phone numbers and datebook.

Nice to hear from you Yousuf. Have sent you a Gmail invite. 5 more Gmail invites left folks!
Btw, glad to hear you like Haemoncrules. Just to let you know version 1.8 is ready but have been on vacation so will put it up for download when I get back home.

PA ToolBox 5.0

Medical Wizards have released PA Toolbox 5.0 which is a suite of 15 modules for the PA
working in the critical care, emergency or primary care environment.

PA ToolBox provides the most valuable modules from ERSuite for the PA working in the critical care, emergency or primary care environment. This product also provides substantial textbook type content in the areas of ENT and Infectious Disease, covering all common complaints. 15 task specific sections (modules) are now included, with rapid access to content via our easy to use search tool

For the vets too

Skyscape is not forgetting the animal doctors with these two new releases:

ParasitesDC™ (Parasitology: Diagnosis And Treatment Of Common Parasitisms In Dogs And Cats)

The PDA reference is can be used by both the technician and the practitioner in the clinic as a concise, easy to use and accurate means of diagnosing commonly seen parasites of dogs and cats, and to decide on an appropriate treatment protocol. The parasites selected will be those normally occurring in fecal or blood specimens found in North America. Identification will be made on the basis of shape, size and color. As the user moves through the diagnostic, key options will appear which suggest how to proceed toward a diagnosis. When a final diagnosis is made there will be a brief description of clinical signs, infectious stages, organisms with similar characteristics, zoonoses, suggested treatment options, drugs and drug dosages. The program is indexed by organism and by drugs.

VetDrugs™ (Handbook of Veterinary Drugs, 3rd Ed.)

The newly updated Third Edition of the popular Handbook of Veterinary Drugs is now available for PDAs, providing instant access to information on drug therapies for dogs, cats, horses, ruminant species, pigs, birds, rodents, rabbits, ferrets, and reptiles. Entries on over 1,000 drugs include indications, formulations, interactions, common side effects, and adverse effects. Dosages for each species are included.

PDAs in disaster relief

It is now 4 days after the disastrous earthquake north of Sumatra which resulted in devastation across coastal Asia due to tidal waves and tsunamis.

Orenjus of KVPUG (the Klang Valley Palm User Group) is one of the young Malaysian doctors who have volunteered to assist via Mercy Malaysia's efforts. At first he was supposed to go to Acheh but latest from this thread is that he'll be going to Sri Lanka.
I did tell him to go armed with his PDA ;) but Orenjus is worried about bringing along elecronic equipment. I think with a protective casing like the Aquapac, you can keep the Palm (as well as your other electronic equipment like your cellphone) safe and dry. You will need a constant source of power so if one has a Solar powered battery charger, that would be handy too!
I seriously think the Palm PDA would be a useful source of medical reference in disaster relief areas. You can't carry all that info in your head!

All the best Orenjus!

User experience: Richard Wahl

Richard Wahl from Tucson writes;

Hi. Perspectives from a pediatrician -- here are the Palm applications I use most often: General medical: Clinical Medicine Consult (with iSilo), Pepid, Merck (with free journal access). Drug databases: Pepid, Harriet Lane, Prescriber's Letter PDA version (and about to delete the "free, gift subscirption" to ePocrates Pro which arrived anonymously -- just don't trust its feedback to ePocrates central, and I still don't know who paid for it to track my look-up activities. Also extreme RAM hog). Pediatric specific: Kidometer (Riley Children's Hospital), Harriet Lane, AAP Red Book (with free Highwire journal access). Freeware: Growth-BP (formerly stat-Growth), Shots 2004, CDC 2002 STD Guidelines (iSilo), PregWheel, Stat-Hypertension JNC-7, CDC TB Guidelines Misc: Natural Database (CAM modalities), Mobipocket Medical Spanish Plus, Pocket OBG. PDA: Tungsten-C with 512MB SD card. And love it's Wi-Fi ability to surf and check e-mail in my local cafe.

Thanks for the contribution Richard. I agree the Tungsten C is a great Wifi capable PDA. Now with the Wifi SD Card I appreciate the ability to surf and check email too but I do find it a tad bit inconvenient to swop SD cards. I need Bluetooth however as I rely on it to communicate with my phone (an SE t610) for SMS and GPRS internet access where there is no Wifi. So please, please palmOne, do release a dual wireless PDA!!
A free Gmail invitation goes out to Richard for writing in. I have 6 Gmail invitations left, so if you want to grab these, just write in and share your Palm medical experiences!

User experience: Luiz Eduardo

Luiz Eduardo from São Paulo, Brazil writes:

I follow Medical Palm software since the days of my Palm Vx 5 years ago. When I started my internship in Ophthalmology 3 years ago I was the only one with a Palm device (a m505), out of 19 residents; now there are 10 residents with Palm devices. We all use Skyscape Will´s Eye Manual, IOL calculation software and Epocrates Dx. And all of these devices were configured by myself, most of them T3 and TE. Keep up the great blog.

Thanks for writing in Luiz. A Gmail invitation has been sent out to you. 7 Gmail invites left folks....

WeightWatchers for Palm

I was a little amused to read that WeightWatchers have recently released a program for PDAs that work hand-in-hand with the company's online services. The Weight Watchers on-the-Go mobile program will eliminate the need to carry around a log-book and is ahandy way to carry the 25,000 item food database.
I am amused because some time back, someone offered a simlar program for free to WW - called WWCalc, but it became The App That Weight Watchers Tried To Kill

User experience: Bill Whitty

Bill writes:

Well First of all I use to have epocrates but since I bought my Treo 650 I have switched to davis drugs for nurses till epocrates comes out with SD transfer. Also I use tabes from Skyscape and Medcalc. Use to use infusical but also doesn't work on Treo's. Lastly I use Isilo with Clinical Medicine Consultant. Hope that is of some help. Bill

Thanks for your feedback Bill. Interesting that you had to stop using ePocrates with your Treo650. The amount of memory in the Treo smartphones does not appeal to me as a 64MB T3 user - I could never switch simply because of this. There are alot of applications which nowadays need regular Ram and the likes of ePocrates still don't support SD cards!!!
A free Gmail invite goes out to you Bill. I have 8 GMail invitations left so if anyone wants one, all you have to do is write to me and relate your Palm Medical experience and share with us what you consider your favorite Palm medical software.

Merry Christmas!

Medical Imaging Consultant

Orrison Books and the USBMIS have released Medical Imaging Consultant, the PDA version.
This is available for both the Palm and Pocket PC platforms.
"With all the same great diagnosing information that can be found in the Print Edition, the Medical Imaging Consultant, PDA Edition allows physicians to order The One Best Test in diagnostic imaging in an intuitive, electronic format."

Reminder: Free Gmail Invitations!

I have 9 Gmail invitations left. If you would like one, all you have to do is to email me your Medical Palm PDA experience with regard to how it is useful in your daily work and your favorite applications. A free Gmail invitation goes out to every email published.
Gmail now supports free forwarding of email and also Pop access - you can configure your Versamail or Snappermail to check Gmail on the go. There is no official mobile-friendly Gmail web interface yet but if you have access to a PHP server, you can install Gmail-lite

RxCalc 4.1

RxCalc 4.1 has been updated

RxCalc (formerly known as Dosecalc) is an essential tool for Pediatricians. With this you can: - Easily calculate medication doses - Obtain extensive information available of each of the medications: - Work out Oral & Single-Dose Bolus Medications The new version of RxCalc is now fully compatible with the T5, as well as the Treo 600 and 650.

User experience: Brendan Vaughan

Brendan Vaughan writes in:

We are still in an age of innocence with medical handhelds. One can pull up a prognosis on a patients rash/ache/ailment at the point-of-care from a peer reviewed text, and not lose any credibility in the process - rather, I am greeted with choruses of "cool" (from the younger ones) or "does that do your taxes too?" from the older ones (to which, of course, I answer yes!). But even when handhelds have become de rigeur in the eyes of patients the enormous potential for these little devices to become personal guideline/reference repositories is amazing. I use four programs to achieve just this on a daily basis: iSilo, Repligo, Bonsai and PDAToolbox. Isilo, and its companion iSiloX make it wonderfully easy to clip web-based reference material into my handheld (often nicely hyperlinked). For those ubiquitous .PDF pages, repligo is the fastest, most faithful to the original, and easiest to use document converter on the market (now I just have to get it talking to my printer via bluetooth for patient handouts). Bonsai origanizes my clinical pearls from conferences, journals etc. in a heirarchechal fashion. Finally PDAToolbox is a great solution for non-programmers, such as myself, to make fully functioning, reasonably robust palm apps in a short amount of time. I have have made several of these, useful to myself clinically, not to mention the "you wrote this" exclamations from colleagues. Indeed, medicine, with its reference-intensive demands is the handhelds "killer app".

Thanks for sharing your experience Brendan. A Gmail invitation goes out to you.
9 Gmail invites left folks!

Clinical Hematology Oncology 2005

Pacific Primary Care has released Clinical Hematology Oncology 2005

An extensive reference text on the presentation, diagnosis, treatment and differential of Hem-Onc conditions. Topics include: cancers, Oncologic Emergencies, DVT, pulmonary embolism, the anemia's, lead toxicity, sickle cell, prophyria, cancer syndromes & tx, blood cell abnormalities, transfusion medicine, bleeding disorders, DIC... Features: illustrations and hyperlinks. Detailed workups and extensive treatment options. Edited by a board certified Hematologist-Oncologist.

Gmail invitations up for grabs!

Just got a whole bunch of Gmail invitations - 10 to be exact. Care for one? Now here's the deal: if you write to me telling me of your favorite Palm medical applications and how using a Palm PDA has enriched your life/made things easy etc - I'll give out a free Gmail invite to the author of every email that gets published here....

If you haven't heard of Gmail - this is Google's webmail which is stil in beta but works very well. 1 GB storage and 10MB size attachments allowed. It's fast and I love the ability to search your emails. You literalyl never have to delete your emails again. It's free and not open to the public yet. It's by invitation only......

C-Tools Pocket Pc Version Released

The Americal Cancer Society has in partnership with Alterion, released C-Tools 2.0 Beta for Pocket PC.
The PalmOS beta program was launched earlier and hopefully both final versions will be release in January 2005 according to the ACS.
Anyway it's good that there are now lots of medical programs on both Palm and PPC platforms giving us the choice. If palmOne doesn't release a dual wireless PDA next year, Palmdoc may well become PPCDoc ;)

Hires from Unbound

In their latest newsletter, Unbound Medicine says their new apps support high resolution Portrait and Landscape Modes are now available for devices that support it, such as the new Palm Tungsten T5. This is great news since this means a 50% larger viewing area in one go. Skyscape had better catch up.

Wifi for the Treo650

Why wait for palmOne to get their act together? If you have a Treo650 you can get Wifi now. I am amazed how innovative the Palm community is!

New Skyscape apps

Here's a quartet of new releases from Skyscape:

EchoGuide™ (The Ultimate Echo Guide)

The perfect quick consult for the busy cardiologist, The Ultimate Echo Guide for PDA puts the most clinically essential information from the text manual in a convenient electronic format ideal for your handheld. Expertise is at your fingertips... * Diagnostic methods and formulas help you choose the best echo modality for each patient, and aid in analysis of results. * Key diagnostic features help you recognize specific pathologies. * Specific echocardiographic parameters help you stratify a disease as mild, moderate, or severe. * Concise, straightforward text with bullet points lets you access key information at a glance. * Tables and selected illustrations promote accurate interpretation of echo results and assist in therapeutic decision-making and follow-up. * Cross-reference to all LWW titles powered by Skyscape for a powerful interlinking point-of-care tool.

emPlastic™ (eMedicine Plastic Surgery)

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 204 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. This volume, authored and edited by 279 contributing physicians, is designed for use by practicing physicians, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions.

emPsych™ (eMedicine Psychiatry)

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 73 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. This volume, authored and edited by over 60 contributing physicians, is designed for use by practicing physicians, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions.

emSurg™ (eMedicine Surgery & Surgical Specialties)

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 179 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. Sections include General Surgery, Neurosurgery, Thoracic Surgery, Transplantation, Trauma, Urology and Vascular Surgery.

Skweezer

We doctors are always in a hurry. Our PDAs allow us to be mobile road warriors with which we can check our email and access web pages on the go.
Here's an interesting site for those of you who access the Internet wirelessly from your PDAs: Skweezer.
What's the advantage? It compresses and formats the web pages automagically to PDA friendly sizes. It does so very quickly too. I am impressed by the speed. When you sign up (for FREE), you are also given a clean webmail interface with which you configure your POP email accounts and you can check and send email via Skweezer. This would be great if your POP mail account restricts the SMTP (send mail) only when you are connected to certain ISPs.
Well I have signed up and will be skweezing away with my T3 :)

Accessing information

While the PDA is a handy source of information at the "point of care", there's only so much that you can keep on it, even with a 1GB SD Card. Yeah, Palmdoc got himself a 1 GB Kingmax Card - all for only US$89!
Still, I think the way forward is to access information via the Internet and wirelessly. This is why I believe palmOne should and must come out quickly with a dual wireless PDA and not just concentrate on the smartphone market. You can Google for information using the PDA friendly Google Search for Palm. Now there's news of Google teaming up with libraries so that the already vast pool of information becomes even larger. So no matter how fast SD card capacity increases, it'll never be enough!

Nurse's Pocket Drug Guide

Unbound Medicine has released Nurse's Pocket Drug Guide 2005 2.1 on Palmgear.

Nurse's Pocket Drug Guide 2005 includes over 1,000 commonly used drugs and presents essential data relating to their selection and administration. Organized alphabetically by generic and trade name, each drug includes key data featuring common uses and side effects as well as nursing implications and patient education information. A list of the medications organized by drug classification is also provided.

Yet another drug reference for your PDA. There are so many now it is mind boggling. I have had a chance to check out quite a few and most are good. However if it comes down to the most comprehensive drug reference for the Palm, my vote goes to Lexi-drugs

KISS

/rant on
I've been feeling kinda unsettled ever since palmOne released the T5 putting a damper on my hopes of a better Palm powered PDA than my T3. Mind you the T3 is a superb PDA bar it's rather poor battery life (it has only a 900 mA battery compared with the T5's 1300mA) but it has vibrating alarms and a voice recorder while not being absolutely essential, they are nice options which palmOne was foolish to omit on the T5. I did get palmOne's SD Wifi card thereby temporarily satisfying my need to be "connected" whenever and wherever I am - be it via GPRS or Wifi.
What I do hope to see is a palmOne powered device, without the slider (I do like the T5's design) yet with dual wireless, voice recorder and vibrating alarms. I don't see how it can be so difficult for palmOne to come out with one since the PPC camp has had dual wireless devices for yonks.
But is it the beginning of the end for palmOne and the palmOS platform? I am even more confused now that Palmsource has announced that OS6/Cobalt (in grave danger of being stillborn) will have a Linux kernel. So where does this leave palmOne? Will they go merrily along their way in smartphone-land (sounds like Handspring all over again..) and even (heaven forbid) produce a Windoze powered smartphone? Will the T5 be the last palmOS powered PDA by palmOne?
I hope not. Many doctors I am certain appreciate things simple. The K.I.S.S. principle. A surgeon colleague "danced with the dark side" recently when he got an Acer PPC to replace his dead Clie. After about two weeks, he realised how horribly unfriendly the PPC platform is compared to palmOS and now he is a happy owner of a T|E.
I dread the day we are forced to see Microsoft everywhere. ERDoc has this horrifying report of an ECG machine which needs to REBOOT just because it runs Windoze!!
Long live Palm!
/rant off

P.S. Just to share this great cartoon warning one of the dangers of Windoze in hospitals ;)

Game to motivate

I guess it's not surprising. In Wireless Game Motivates Children with Type 1 Diabetes to Improve Monitoring, a study looked at how a wireless-equipped personal digital assistant (PDA), linked with blood glucose management software and DiaBetNet, could assist in diabetes management among youth.

The study, recently published in Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics, found that youth ages 8-18 with type 1 diabetes were more apt to monitor their blood glucose levels more often when engaged in a game called DiaBetNetTM -- an application that integrates blood glucose, insulin dosing, and carbohydrate intake data and challenges users to predict their next blood glucose levels. DiaBetNet was created by Vikram Kumar, a medical student at the time in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, together with MIT Professor Alex Pentland, Ph.D., and Lori Laffel, M.D., M.P.H., head of Joslin's Pediatric and Adolescent section.

I have an idea for Astraware. Why not come out with a special Medical Student Edition of Bejewelled 2? Astraware could work with Skyscape or Unbound Medicine with this edition where every third round of Bejewelled 2 takes you to a chapter of Harrison's Internal Medicine or perhaps a Medical CME quiz which you are required to complete before proceeding on to the next level. Now that might be a best-seller ;)

Clinical Trial Info on your Palm

For the first time you can access clinical trial information on your PDA.
Skyscape has released DrugStudies™ (Thomson CenterWatch Clinical Trial Listings)

Thomson CenterWatch is dedicated to providing patients and their advocates with a variety of information services and educational materials on clinical research. The Clinical Trials Listing Service™ Database includes listings of thousands of industry-sponsored clinical trials that are actively recruiting patients in the U.S. and internationally. This also includes government-funded clinical research studies being conducted by the National Institutes of Health, including trial listings from the National Cancer Institute and from the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD. Key Features * Dynamic database listing current phase I - IV clinical trials recruiting patients (approx. 14,000 private industry sponsored trial listings). * Accessible through therapeutic area or geographic location. * Clinical trial listings are IRB (Institutional Review Board)-approved and meet GCP (Good Clinical Practice) guidelines. * All therapeutic areas. * Access to hundreds of Research Center profiles. * Updated monthly.

They have also released DrugTrials™ (Thomson CenterWatch Pipeline Intelligence)

Users will be able to keep up with the latest in scientific clinical trial activity and drug development using market intelligence and knowledge resources from CenterWatch, the leading resource for the clinical trials industry. This highly valuable resource has 4 components to help you monitor and stay abreast of medical breakthroughs on the frontiers of medicine: - Drugs in Clinical Trials - Clinical Trial Results - Newly Approved Drugs - Clinical Trials Listing Service

Agendus 9 Pro

For the medical road warrior, I believe that Agendus is the best PIM replacement there is for PalmOS. I rely heavily on it and in fact I use it to track my patients by keeping notes "logged" into the Contact note field. It is particularly useful for doctors since we are very "contact-centric" in our meetings and appointments.
Agendus 9 Pro has been released with numerous new features. The speed has also been enhanced and there is no more slow sorting of the contacts on start-up.
Visit the iambic Agendus Pro website for more details.

PubMed on Tap v1.6

PubMed on Tap v1.6 update is now available. A great utility for online access to Pubmed from your PDA or smartphone.

These features are new in Version 1.6: * At startup, the Search and Profile settings are set from your last search. * You have the option to cluster results by clinical relevance recommended in Evidence Based Medicine. * The Search defaults to return 50 results. 20 and 40 results are other options. * If there is a linkout to free-full-text, the linkout icon is green. * Error messages are more meaningful. Please try the new version and let us know what you think. There is also new documentation: a PowerPoint file with screen shots from both Palm and PocketPC devices. Download this training guide from http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/pmot/docs.php

5MCC2005 Unbound

Unbound Medicine has also released their version of the popular 5 Minute Clinical Consult 2005
New in the 2005 edition:
* Auto-Updates when you sync!
* New Topics such as personality disorders, peritonsillar abscess, methanol poisoning, multiple endocrine neoplasia (MEN), and CNS tuberculosis.
* Updates to more than 50% of the topics since the 2004 edition
* Landscape view for Palm OS and Pocket PC devices

The last bit is interesting. I wonder if it also supports 320x480 in portrait mode? That would put it one up against Skyscape which has yet to support Hires+!

Ferritest

Another new release from Skyscape, FerriTests™ (Ferri's Best Test - A Practical Guide to Clinical Laboratory Medicine and Diagnostic Imaging) helps direct readers to the most efficient and cost-effective imaging and laboratory studies for any diagnostic challenge. Written by best-selling author Fred Ferri, MD, FACP, Ferri's Best Test presents complete guidance on both radiologic and laboratory approaches in a single, user-friendly source.

USMLE S3

Skyscape has just released USMLE S3 (Crush Step 3, 2nd Ed.)

The market leader among all books for Step 3, Crush is an easy-to-use and effective high yield review for USMLE Step 3. The concise presentation is perfect for the busy house officer who needs a review that hits all the commonly tested concepts. The coverage also weaves in the case-based scenarios that are important part of Step 3.

Flash cards for Medstudents

Something medical students could use. If you want to keep notes and quiz yourselves, then you might want to take a look at the freebie Lexi 3.5

Description: Lexi is a free flashcard program that helps you to study any topic, anywhere, at your pace. You may use it to memorize vocabulary, or to practice any other subject that can be written as a pair of question (prompt) and answer on flashcards. The program stores your quiz results and uses them to re-ask you the questions you missed the answer and to compile the most difficult quizzes. This makes sure that learning with Lexi is as effective as possible.

PsychoPharm

Skyscape has released PsychoPharm™ (Psychopharmacotherapy at Your Finger Tips: A Life Span Approach) on Palmgear.

This convenient handheld reference is a quick one-stop guide to prescribing psychotropic drugs for patients at every stage of the life span—children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly. With a tap of a stylus, clinicians can get reliable, succinct, and easy-to-scan information about any drug, including what formulations are available, how to prescribe for each age group, how the drug compares to alternative treatments, and what precautions are necessary. Coverage encompasses all current psychotherapeutic medications, including agents used to treat substance abuse.

Wifi and the T5 (part 2)

Leo of MedPDA.net points out that PDAs equipped with Wifi do not cause problems for patients iwth implantable cardiac devices. True, I guess - if you search in Pubmed for "patient with ICD drops dead after turning on Wifi" you won't find any result I'll bet!
So everyone now with a T5 who wants Wifi can safely go get palmOne's SD Wifi card especially since palmOne has released an Updated Driver which supports the T5. palmOne has also relased a new version of the Phonelink Update utility. I am glad that palmOne has done so. My belief is that PDAs are evolving into communication devices. It is not all about smartphones though since connectivity includes Wifi and Bluetooth.
As for me I am still waiting for that elusive dual wireless PDA from palmOne!!

Big Red Palm

The Big Red Book comes to your Palm with the release of AHFS DI (AHFS Drug Information) by Skyscape

First published in 1959, the "Big Red Book," as it's come to be known, has gone the extra mile for pharmacists and healthcare professionals seeking answers to the most detailed questions. It provides more extensive evidence-based data than any other drug reference and is now available for the PDA.

Donate a PDA and fight AIDS

HELP FIGHT AIDS IN AFRICA BY DONATING USED PDAs

For World AIDS Day: Skyscape and SATELLIFE Will Refit Handheld Devices with Medical References and Donate Them to Doctors in Africa

HUDSON, MASS.­December 1, 2004 ­Most of the seven million Americans who upgrade to a new PDA every year simply throw their used one away or put it in a drawer not knowing what to do with it. Skyscape and SATELLIFE are creating a “Global Supply Line” that will eliminate this waste and put old handheld devices to good use­by donating them to physicians in Africa. Skyscape will equip these handheld devices with mobile medical references enabling health practitioners in the developing world to access the latest medical information while working in rural areas. This program begins December 1, 2004 (World AIDS Day). “Like cell phones, PDA turnover is high as new models are introduced. This holiday season many PDAs will be retired, but these can be put to good use: helping doctors in developing nations provide better healthcare,” said Sandeep Shah, CEO of Skyscape. “For more than a decade we have been developing different ways by which mobile medicine can improve healthcare. Now teaming with SATELLIFE, Skyscape is bringing these benefits to the farthest corners of the world.” Anyone wishing to donate their used PDA should visit, www.skyscape.com/AIDSDAY for more information.

Good job guys. Now go get that T5/Treo650 upgrade and donate your ol' Vx/m515/T|T etc. !

Skyscape and Samsung

Samsung must be targetting physicians for their smartphones as they have been reported to tie up with Skyscape:

Skyscape(R), Inc. (www.skyscape.com) and Samsung Telecommunications America (www.samsungusa.com/wireless) today announced a strategic alliance aimed at bringing the best in mobile medicine to a new generation of converged wireless devices by co-marketing Skyscape-powered software on select Samsung phones. The Skyscape Constellation for Samsung Phones, an intuitive, all-in-one healthcare decision support solution, provides comprehensive coverage of critical information about drugs, diseases, interactions, lab information and treatment options. Customers who purchase the Mobile Medical Solutions for the Samsung Mobile Intelligent Terminal (MITs) devices, the PalmSource OS(R)-based i500 and Microsoft(R) Windows Mobile(TM)-based i700 Pocket PC Phone, will be able to purchase the Skyscape Constellation for Samsung Phones at a significantly discounted price of $179, a savings of $164 from the standard subscription price. An evaluation copy of the Skyscape Constellation for Samsung Phones ships with every purchase of the Mobile Medical Solutions for Samsung Phones.

Samsung produces nifty PalmOS powered smartphones like the i500 reviewed by The Gadgeteer. I believe they have released OS5 models as well. I don't know why they don't market their phones in my region - we see only Treos and the GSL Xplorers. Well, if there is a PalmOS powered smartphone with at least 64MB Ram, replaceable batteries, dual wireless then I might be interested. Otherwise I'm sticking with my T3 + Sony-Ericsson t610!

HIV Info

December 1 is World Aids Day. I thought I'd try and locate some free HIV information for your Palm PDA.
The CDC has an AIDS Info Tools webpage with a Drug Database and a HIV/AIDS Glossary .
You can also download HIV Drug & Mutation Reference Guide 2.0 from PalmGear.
There is also a free iSilo reference General Information on HIV & AIDS from the Medical iSilo Depot.
If there are any others do let me know.

Stedman's Medical Dictionary

Skyscape has updated the HPND5™ (Stedman's Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing, 5th Ed.) and also released StedmansA™ (Stedman's Abbreviations, Acronyms & Symbols, 3rd Ed.)

The Fifth Edition of the popular Stedman's Concise medical dictionary is thoroughly updated with a new name and more than 51,000 entries, featuring more of the medical terminology used in over 30 of today's fastest growing health profession areas. You'll also find more comprehensive inclusion of entries suited for the Nursing field, with correct terminology for all Nursing students and practitioners. Features include: * More than 4,000 new terms totaling 51,000 terms * Written pronunciations for every term help you master usage quickly * More British alternative spellings * More than 40 leading consultants from the fastest growing nursing and health professions contributed to the enhancements of this latest edition

Do you use a Medical dictionary? They come in quite handy when you want to look up definitions and spelling. Stedman's ranks amongst the best IMO. What's your favorite medical dictionary?

Memoleaf

How do you organise your notes on your PDA as your "peripheral brain"? I must admit I am rather disorganised as I just chuck them into my T3's Memo. Things have been getting quite cluttered lately and I have been looking to better organise my notes.
There are many solutions out there. Jim Thompson for example uses Bonsai Outliner as his peripheral brain.
I didn't fancy recreating a new database of notes though.
I noticed then this app being updated in Palmgear - Memoleaf

Memo Leaf is a companion to work with the Palm OS built-in Memo Pad/Memos database. While keeping valuable memo information organized, it is powered with lightning fast search functions to locate information. Instead of classifying memos into limited number of categories, Memo Leaf allows memos to be better described and classified based on the memo title. Keywords can be put in the first line of the memo as the memo title. Then effective queries can be performed either by looking up those keywords appeared in the memo title or by finding text within the entire memo content.

This sounds like a great solution to those of you (like me) who have a huge collection of notes haphazardly arranged in your Palm's memopad. I think I'll give it a try. I like the feature where you can export a group of notes to Palm doc format before purging it - great way to archive them out. There is also a search history and template function so it looks like one powerful little package!

Quit smoking tools

Spotted this bizzare idea in Gizmodo - an Electronic Cigarette Counter which you can stick on your pack of carcinogens!
For PalmOS users you can use some freeware utilities like Cigarette Count
and Smoking v1.03 to keep track of how much you've poisoned your body each day.
Ectopic Brain blogged about the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) releasing a new consumer tool for Palm OS and Windows Mobile handhelds to help smokers who want to quit. Unfortunately I've been trying to get to the Quit Smoking: Consumer Interactive Tool page - but the latter link does not work.

5MCC 2005

Skyscape has released 5MCC 2005 (Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2005)
Medical software for PDAs are really becoming huge and memory cards are a must. Still I can't help noticing that the memory requirement is 4.6MB for PalmOS compared with 10.2MB for Windows mobile (PPC)!

Screenshots : Wells criteria for PE

	Wells criteria was highlighted recently in the press - this is a screen shot from the Medwire Avantgo channel showing the article. Wells criteria has recently been tested out again in the Emergency Room setting and has been found to be useful as a screening guide for the diagnosis of Pulmonary embolism
	I thought I'd just take the opportunity to show a screenshot from the up and coming Haemoncrules v1.8 - I have added a filtering feature in the main screen so that you can view lists of "benign" and "malignant" modules.
	One of the "benign" modules is the Wells criteria for Pulmonary embolism.
	You input the clinical criteria and you can easily calculate out the score for the probability of PE> Isn't this easier than carrying around the reference in some piece of paper and using a pen and paper to try to add up the score?
	What's more, you can proceed on to test guidelines according to Wells' paper: the diagnostic algorithm guides you to PE confirmation or exclusion by various tools such as D-dimer assay, CT Angio, VQ scan and Doppler U/S according to the Wells clinical score. Neat eh?

 
Sorry for the unusually large number of pics in this blogpost but I wanted to see if hello.com could add multiple pics in one blog. I also wanted to highlight the point that Haemoncrules is not all "malignant" and there are modules which even ERDoc could use ;)
I've added another new module in version 1.8 and revised two other modules. Stay tuned for more......

Food Factor

Fear not weight watchers, Palm programmers are out there to help you!
I spotted Calorie Factor which is described as "a dietary calculator used to calculate a score of points". Freeware.
Reminds me of another free tool which was discontinued due to pressure from a certain organization. I looked around and WWCalc is still alive and thriving in Cyberspace! The latter is somewhat more sophisticated than Calorie Factor and can work with Food Lists.
Now for Asian Food lovers, some good news. My friend peterscm has converted the Asian Food Database which previously works with PalmOS databases lkike HanDbase, to a standalone program.


It's still a work in progress though and not yet released. I thought I'd put a screenshot here as a sneak preview.

Avantgo 5.7 beta

At long last Avantgo 5.7 (beta) is out and supports Hires+ (320x480) screens in both Portrait and Landscape modes.
This is simply fantastic and something I've been waiting for a long time.



You can download it here
At the moment there unfortunately isn't a whole lot of terrific medical content on Avantgo channels. I do hope more Journals and Medical publications would consider publishing TOCs, Abstracts and News for doctors on Avantgo channels or mobile friendly web pages.

Patient Follower

Yet another patient tracker program, Patient Follower has been released.

Description:

Patient Follower - A PalmPilot Patient Tracking Tool. Designed for attendings, residents, students. Featuring: - Follow Patient Info and Location - Automatically Follow Hospital Days - AutoCalc Medication/Treatment Days - Summarize Patient Totals by Ward - Summarize Patients by Intern or Team - Archive Patients and Bounce-Back - Tap on Headings for quick entry - Customizable for your own Hospital

Palm EMR

Noah of KVPUG continues fine development on his Palm EMR project. This runs on PHP and MySQL. It basically allows you to access patient medical records from a PDA and is an interesting solution if you have WLAN at work.
View the ongoing discussion in KVPUG's Doctors Shack. To see an online demo, take this link http://emr.asiabox.biz/palmemr/index.php - you can login with your PC or PDA. The screen is formatted for PDAs. Use Admin as the login and 1234 as the password. PalmEMR is Opensource and if you want to take a look at the source files, download here

New Skyscape releases

The following are new Skyscape releases which you might want to check out:
FerriGuide6™ (Practical Guide to the Care of the Medical Patient, 6th Ed.)
MedAbbrev™ (Dictionary of Medical Acronyms & Abbreviations, 5th Ed.)

I would certainly like to check out the latter. I am interested if it is a comprehensive source for clinical trial acronyms. There certainly isn't any comprehensive website with clinical trial acronyms (I found this one)- I wish there were as there are so many and it's getting very confusing.

Pedi-Table

Pedi-Table 0.9b has been released on Palmgear

A quick and easy way to look up dosaging information for pediatric medications. Yes, there are other pediatric dosing 'calculators' out there, but who has the time to enter all the weight and concentration info in the middle of a busy practice. All I wanted was a QUICK and simple reference table to dosaging info, and that is what Pedi-Table does. Simply scroll up and down until you find the med you want, and then tap on it. Tap again to return to the main screen. Shareware.

T5 and Skyscape Update

If you are a T5 user or planning to "upgrade" to a T5, you might be interested to know that for Skyscape applications, you need to install an updated SSCAdmin file otherwise you might face problems installing Skyscape applications.

http://www.skyscape.com/support/installing_faq.asp#t5q1

Please update the SSCAdmin file on your Windows desktop pc 1. Download new SSCAdmin from: http://216.21.136.233/patches/Palm/t5/SSCAdmin.exe 2. Save SSCAdmin to this directory C:\Program Files\Common Files\Skyscape 3. Say yes to overwrite existing SSCAdmin 4. Go to Start | Programs | Skyscape | Product | Install to device 5. Press Hotsync button 6. Install screen will appear on desktop PC 7. Choose INTERNAL (this is the flash memory/USB drive on the device). Internal Memory is the device memory (handheld memory). CARD is the expansion memory - SD card

Where are the postcards?

Sadly after over 2000 downloads in Palmgear for HaemOncRules, the postcard count is only 1 :(
Now if you are a HaemOncRules user, this is what you have to put in your To Do list in your Palm now:

Send Palmdoc a postcard

Anyway thank you Robert. Your card is much appreciated. And see how quickly one's suggestion gets incorporated into the program ;)

Pharmacokinetic software for the Palm

I tried installing JavaPK but unfortunately I got an application error message saying that the "application required to view this data cannot be found".
I had earlier written to the author wondering if the software was compatible with IBM Java since the installation instructions in the homepage for JavaPK says to install midp.prc from Sun first. Anyway,I have informed the author of this incompatibility.
You might be interested to know that there are a few other pharmacokinetic software solutions for Palm OS: KineticsPro 1.2, Antibiotic Kinetics & Pharmacokinetics suite.

emPeds

Skyscape has released emPeds™ (eMedicine Pediatrics & Pediatric Specialties) on Palmgear

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 874 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. Twenty-two pediatric specialty areas are covered.

JavaPK

Have you installed Java on your PDA? I have (IBM Java from palmOne) and there aren't many medical apps for it at the moment. In fact from what I can see there are mostly games for the Java environment which folks like to play on their mobile phones. Creating a Java medical app would mean it is truly multi-platform and it's amazing how JavaPK a clinical pharmacokinetic program can run on a PalmOS-based PDA as well as a Java-supported cellular phone. The program contains individualized pharmacokinetic parameters estimation for digoxin, aminoglysocides (gentamicin & amikacin), vancomycin, phenytoin and cyclosporin-A.
You can download it from the software's homepage or from Palmgear. 30-day trial.

Guidelines for your PDA

I am sure many of you are aware of the National Guideline Clearinghouse, a repository of freely available guidelines. I was pleasantly suprised to find that the kind folk at the NGC have made their guidelines available as Palm Downloads. This is great news and I'm at the moment downloading some for my reference :)

ClinUrology

I have a urologist colleague who loves gadgets. Well, not as bad as Technobill ;) I've always believed having the latest and the greatest is not the point - the point is whether you are using what you have and maximizing the potential of what you have.
Anyway Peter, I don't know if you read this blog, but Skyscape has just the app for you:

Skyscape has released ClinUrology™ (Clinical Manual of Urology)

The perfect guide to practice, Clinical Manual of Urology puts leading-edge advice as close as your pocket. With up-to-date practices described by today's leading clinicians, this reference offers fundamental help with all major urologic conditions and diseases, plus time-saving recommendations on important problems you won't find covered in other clinical texts. In addition to presenting the major categories of urologic disease, the reference also covers important topics such as radiology, radiation therapy, nephrology, pediatric urology, transplantation surgery and vascular surgery.

Haemoncrules 1.7

I have updated Haemoncrules to version 1.7 and released the update on Palmgear
Visit the Haemoncrules Homepage which has undergone some changes - the complete list of modules is listed as is the version history.
The two new modulesare Acute GVHD grading and Myeloma SWOG staging.

Screenshot: Haemoncrules 1.7

It has been a quiet week for me. There are fewer patients because of the Ramadan holidays over here. Took the opportunity to update Haemoncrules.
This is a sneek preview of Haemoncrules version 1.7. Two new modules will be added, one of which is a handy reference for Acute GVHD Grading.  
Was wondering why Ectopic Brain has been quiet too - and here's the reason. Let's hope his new practice settles down quickly and let's see him back to his usual posting self :)

Haemoncrules Homepage

After more than 2000 downloads from Palmgear, I thought I'd give the Haemoncrules project a homepage of it's own.
So what are you waiting for?
Click on


I'm no great web designer myself, unlike experts like Mike Rohde - world famous designer. I had to rely on free templates from the web and other free web-tools. Tell me if you like it or hate it ;)

ePocrates Essentials for PPC

MobileHealthData reports that ePocrates Essentials, the suite of integrated applications by ePocrates comprising Epocrates Rx Pro drug reference guide, Epocrates Dx medical diagnostic and therapeutic reference guide, and Epocrates Lab is now available on the Windows Mobile platform apart from PalmOS.

Screenshot: C-Tools v2beta

Screen shot of the up and coming C-Tools version 2. The new version of the nifty PDA utility from the American Cancer Society. Currently in beta testing (it's stable on my T3) and due for release in January 2005. 

Heparin 1.1.1

Heparin 1.1.1 might be useful for those of you who are still using unfractionated heparin.

Application Description Small program to calculate weight based heparin. It can differentiate between high dose and low dose regimens. Displays the rate in units/hr, ml/hr, and the weight the doses are based on.

Clinical Infectious Diseases 2005

Clinical Infectious Diseases 2005 has been released by Pacific Primary Care in Palmgear.

Application Description Topics include: Travel/ Tropical medicine (evaluation, prevention and treatments), HIV/ AIDS, Parasites (worms, insects, food poisoning...), TB, Leprosy, Lymphadenopathy, Biological/ Chemical Weapons/ Terrorism agents, meningitis/ encephalitis, osteomyelitis, skin infections, fevers, sepsis, antibiotic use, common skin infections, tick bites, animal bites, wounds......... Features: Edited by a highly regarded Infectious Disease specialist.

Voice recognition

I have always been looking for the best portable medical dictation solution. I have an Olympus voice recorder bundled with a speech recognition program. It was only about 80% accurate and meant carrying an extra device with me all the time. I then tried out my Tungsten T with Audacity DVR and voice transcription with Dragon Naturally Speaking. The has been updated to version 8 and now Scansoft claims 99% accuracy. Well the last time (version 5 I think) I had a chance to check it out, it was like 80-90% accuracy at best so if it is 99% I might give it a shot again! Too bad PDA's don't have the processing power to perform the actual transcription but that may change in 10 years time....
Another interesting development is the Treo Launcher. For the first time on PalmOS we have a speech recognition application which allows you to dial contacts and launch applications just by speaking into your Treo 600. Now that is cool. I wish the author would extend it for use on the Tungsten T3.
Now don't you wish palmOne had included a Voice Recorder in the T5?

Haemoncrules 1.6

Haemoncrules 1.6.
I have added two more modules:
1) Prognosis of cancer patients admitted to ICU and
2) Myeloma ISS.
The screenshot above shows the latter. These two new modules were added at the request of Haemoncrules users. There are now a total of 27 modules. Keep the suggestions coming! 

NIOSH Pocket Guide 2004

Back in July 2003, I mentioned the NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards. This Guide has now been updated for 2004 and you can obtain free iSilo and Plucker versions. This is a great chemical hazard reference and has been converted from the NIOSH/CDC site

Current Consult Medicine 2.2

Unbound Medicine has released Current Consult Medicine 2.2

Summary: Integrated medical reference suite covering 850+ disorders linked with 550 differential diagnoses. From the authors of the best-selling text, CURRENT Medical Diagnosis & Treatment

emPMR and emRadio

More "em" titles from Skyscape:
emRadio™ (eMedicine Radiology) 7.0.1
and
emPMR™ (eMedicine Physical Medicine 7.0.1

SMS saves lives

I use SMS (Short Message Services) alot to communicate with colleagues and patients. SMS is a service provided by GSM cellphone carriers. It is cheap and unobtrusive - like a personal mini-fax service. Traditionally one uses T9 or similar input on your cellphone. I simply detest this and prefer to use my Tungsten T3 and send & receive SMSs to and fro from my SE t610 phone using Bluetooth technology. My two favorites are palmOne's built-in SMS program and funSMS. palmOne's SMS program is easy to use and very quick. It interfaces nicely with the builtin Contact database. One major annoying feature is that the SMS program does not display the name of the contact but only the cellphone number. After all this time, can't palmOne fix this?? AgendusMail has an SMS feature and it does display the name rather than the phone number but I have tried it out briefly and it crashed my Palm quite often - please correct me if the latest version is better now. funSMS on the other hand is an excellent stable product. My only gripe is that it takes some time loading the contact database at the beginning - this is quite a while if you have say something like 5000 contacts on your Palm. Otherwise it performs brilliantly and you can organise your SMS messages like email with an Inbox and Outbox, templates etc.
So what's this about SMS saving lives? I came across this Wired article on how this could be so. Interesting read.

emPedSurg

Skyscape has released emPedSurg™ (eMedicine Pediatric Sur 7.0.1) on Palmgear.

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 92 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles across 6 pediatric surgical areas (cardiothoracic, general, otolaryngology, transplant, urology and vascular surgery). Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format.

Diabetes for Palm PDA users

Gosh I didn't know there were at least 16 PDA software companies producing products for diabetes mellitus. Anyway it is National Diabetes Month and PDA24/7 has the news

Asian Food Calorie Database

I have updated the Asian Food Calorie Database to include a Pilot-DB conversion.

Want to know how many calories that plate of Char Koay Teow contains? Want to total the Cholesterol or Sodium content? Now you can carry that information in your Palm! There are now three versions: HanDbase MobileDB PilotDB

Pilot-DB is a free opensource database application for PalmOS. Thanks to SC Chia for conversion.

Ahloon's blazing T5

Ahloon is an anesthetist and a proud owner of a spanking new T5 (and soon to be proud father of twin boys ;) ) He reports in his blog that the T5's internal storage Ram produces very fast VFS marks.
This is good news for us impatient docs where even waiting a few seconds feels like eternity ;)

GPS

Nothing to do with General Practice and not really medically related (golf aside!) but I did get myself a new toy recently - an Ambicom Bluetooth GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver

My Tungsten T3 connects with it flawlessly.

I use Mapopolis quite a fair bit to guide me when I travel around the city and find it useful when I wish to look up various places. Now with the GPS unit, I can quickly centre my location on the Mapopolis map. This is a view of the hospital where I work :


Location: N3º 4.7 E101º 35.6

What else can you do with a GPS? I don't play golf but so many doctors do that golf is almost synonomous with the medical profession ;)
Now with iGolfgps you have another tool to help you lower your handicap

iGolfgps is a “Must Have” for any golfer serious about lowering their score. Using a GPS receiver and a Palm or Pocket PC, iGolfgps provides golfers with distance measurements to the front, center and back of a green, assisting in the appropriate club selection for the remaining distance. Also included is the option to select up to four customizable locations, such as water hazards and sand traps. Another feature is the scorecard for up to four golfers.

Of course if you are into sailing, fishing, hiking, jungle trekking then the GPS should come in very handy. There is a freeware Palm navigation and positioning software called Cetus GPS which works well with Bluetooth GPS units.
And lastly if you are really bored, there are 16,000 other things you can do with a GPS....

Have a good weekend!

Jim's T5

Jim Thompson, he of Peripheral Brain fame and a long time Palm user, has got himself a T5 and you can read his T5 review which I found interesting.

McGraw-Hill and Unbound Medicine

McGraw-Hill and Unbound Medicine have announce five new titles:
CURRENT CONSULT Medicine 2005, CURRENT CONSULT Surgery, Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests, and Essentials of Diagnosis and Treatment in Cardiology.
In addition, a new component to the popular Diagnosaurus program — Diagnosaurus Surgery — was made available free of charge at Diagnosaurus.com. All products deliver current, need-to-know content from McGraw-Hill on Unbound Medicine’s award-winning mobile platform.
That aside, I think the Diagnosaur is cute too :)

C-tools beta test final call

Finally I got the C-tools beta test notice in my email.

We are pleased to release the C-Tools 2.0 Beta for the Palm! Please note this version works only on Palm-based systems, and not on PocketPC systems. The PocketPC version is being finalized now, and we hope to release it in the near future.. If you applied to be a Beta Tester and have not gotten the email containing the link please contact us asap. Otherwise all feedback is due at the end of November.

You can stay updated with all the latest C-Tools news by subscribing to their RSS feed
The last day for enrolment for the beta test program is October 28. They are still looking for more Palm users. What are you waiting for?

Care Giver 1.0

Are you a Care Giver? If you don't want to use a generic database applet, then you might be interested in Care Giver 1.0

Keep track of essential data for individuals whose long term care you are responsible for. Including basic health, prescription information and more

emOPH and HlthAssess

emOPH has been released which is the Skyscape version of eMedicine Ophthalmology.
Description:

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 357 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. This volume, authored and edited by 360 contributing physicians, is designed for use by practicing physicians, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions. This new version combines eMedicine's patented collaborative authoring technology with Skyscape's intelligent mobile solution to create the ultimate handheld reference in this specialty.

HlthAssess is the Skyscape version of Nurses' Handbook of Health Assessment, 5th Ed
Description:

The PDA version of Weber’s Handbook gives nurses instant access to all the assessment information they need. Using an easy to understand format that includes assessment technique, normal findings, and abnormal findings, this resource is geared specifically toward what the nurse needs to know to assess clients, including nursing interventions

emNeuro

Skyscape has released emNeuro™ (eMedicine Neurology) 7.0.1

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 390 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. This volume, authored and edited by 364 contributing physicians, is designed for use by practicing physicians, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions. This new version combines eMedicine's patented collaborative authoring technology with Skyscape's intelligent mobile solution to create the ultimate handheld reference in this specialty.

Why I won't be getting a smartphone

palmOne has announced the Treo650 and it looks like a fine smartphone. The interesting feature to me is the inclusion of Edge which gives one near broadband Internet access in a mobile device. This might tempt some especially there are providers with an "all you can eat" plan with GPRS/Edge access.
However, the main problems for me with a smartphone are:
1) The screen is still too small. The screen resolution may have improved on the Treo650 to 320x320 but it's still too tiny for me. Then again I am spoiled by the T3's 320x480 screen which is awesome expecially when you are reading documents or webpages in Landscape mode. Perhaps if they come up with a smartphone with a larger screen This might be possible if they do away with the silly keypad. Just keep a few essentail buttons - call, answer etc.
2) No wifi. Looks like the Treo650 will not support Wifi. Pity. Their close competitor is the iPaq 6350 which has Wifi + BT. At least now with the SD Wifi card, I have this option which I think is important with the number of hotspots increasing everyday. There are more and more Internet ready apps for the Palm including medical ones such as PubMed on Tap
3) The most important reason for me is I still prefer to carry two devices. If the smartphone were to be spoilt/damaged/lost then you lose everything. If my phone were to give trouble I simply get a replacement which costs far less than a smartphone.

So please palmOne. Not everyone is peachy keen on convergence devices. Let's hope they keep rolling out PDAs and where's that elusive dual wireless PDA?

C-Tools beta out?

Leo of medPDA.net reports that C-Tools beta is out. Thanks for the heads-up Leo but I can't find the link :( Perhaps it is a closed beta?

palmOne Webinars: MercuryMD

Did you attend the last palmOne Webinar (WebSeminar) on the T5? I confess I could not wake up in time but then again it was 1am my time!
Now palmOne and MercuryMD invites you to participate in Webinars featuring The Nebraska Medical Center of Omaha, Nebraska and Riverside Health System of Newport News, Virginia.

On November 2nd at 2:00 PM EST, join Tom Tape, M.D., Chief, General Internal Medicine at The Nebraska Medical Center, as he presents "Improving Clinical Decision Making Through Better Data Access." This 30-minute Webinar will discuss The Nebraska Medical Center clinical workflow challenges and how the organization achieved a competitive advantage with its mobility initiative. Participants will learn what factors to consider when initiating a mobile initiative, such as implementation processes, necessary resources, and how to drive user-adoption and staff buy-in.

On November 10th at 2:00 PM EST, join John Stanley - VP/CIO at Riverside Health System, and Sharon Chenault, IT Project Manager at Riverside Health System, as they discuss the challenges faced by their organization in a competitive marketplace and how they continue to invest in technology to strengthen relationships with their medical staff. In this 30-minute Webinar presentation, "Making it Easier to Practice Medicine" John and Sharon will discuss lessons-learned and how Riverside Health continues to drive value for its medical staff.

Register here

ClinSkills

Skyscape has released ClinSkills™ (Taylor's Clinical Nursing Skills) on Palmgear.

This PDA reference provides instant guidance for performing over 165 skills. Each skill includes equipment lists, assessment parameters, and nursing actions with rationales. Special considerations for pediatric and geriatric clients allow the user to adapt each skill to meet the client's needs. Unexpected outcomes and associated interventions are included, to prepare the user to react appropriately. This product provides instant access to the know-how needed to provide and safe and effective nursing care.

Screenshot: Haemconcrules 1.6

Up coming version of Haemoncrules v1.6 This will incorporate a "Probability of Mortality model for cancer patients admitted to ICU" Groeger et. al. JCO 1998 761-770. This one is for Rob Rowles who made the request via postcard. Coming to you in Palmgear after testing and debugging! 

emMed

Another in Skyscape's em series, emMed 7.01 is eMedicine Internal Medicine & Primary Care

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 1,093 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. This volume, authored and edited by over 1,500 contributing physicians, is designed for use by practicing physicians, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions. This new version combines eMedicine's patented collaborative authoring technology with Skyscape's intelligent mobile solution to create the ultimate handheld reference in these areas.

STAT GrowthCharts

Statcoder has updated STAT GrowthCharts to version 2.5
This freebie allows you to look up the CDC pediatric values for "percentile rank for Weight-for-Age, Height-for-Age, Weight-for-Height, and the new BMI-for-Age obesity indicator". It includes automatic calculation of blood pressure tables from the recently-published guidelines.
I think this is a must have for every Primary care doctor and Pediatrician as well as interested Moms and Dads.....

GIDiseases

Skyscape has released GIDiseases aka Gastrointestinal & Liver Disease on Palmgear.

This concise text is a practical resource for clinicians. It provides reviews of all the major topics in gastrointestinal and liver disease and cites more than two thousand of the most important references in the field. The first section describes the approach to common complaints with links to the detailed discussion of each disease. In this way the clinician is guided from discussion of a complaint (e.g. abdominal pain) to a specific diagnosis (e.g. biliary colic). The disease are described under the headings of Cause, Epidemiology, Pathophysiology, Symptoms, Signs, Course, Complications, Differential Diagnosis, Laboratory tests, Imaging studies, Endoscopy and Treatment. Cross references with direct links are extensively used. The text will be of great value not only to practicing clinicians but also to medical students and residents on gastroenterology or medicine rotations. It should not be difficult to read the entire volume over the course of a typical clerkship. Gastroenterology fellows will find it helpful as a quick reference and as a means of reviewing for Board Certification examinations.

CME Watch

Now there's a freebie, CME Watch v0.4, to help you keep tgrack of your CME activities!

Description: Introducing CME Watch - Track your CME Hours Easily on your Palm. No more worrying about whether you've accumulated enough hours. Use the summary function to add up all the CME hours! Useful for : Physicians, Nurses, Respiratory Therapists....anyone who needs to attend and keep track of Continuing Medical Education Time! Featuring: - Automatically Adds and Summarizes Total CME Hours - Ability to also track days for CME Allowance.

Haemoncrules updated

Haemoncrules has been updated to version 1.5 in Palmgear.
The two new modules are the FLIPI index for follicular lymphoma (see screenshot below) and a Warfarin dosing program (after Ryan).
There are now 25 modules in total. If you have any suggestions for new modules please email me and let me know. Haemoncrules remains freeware. Will there be a PocketPC version? Response to my previous poll was rather dismal so the answer is not in the near future...

Screenshot: Haemoncrules 1.5

Haemoncrules 1.5 is almost ready. By popular request, I have included FLIPI - the Follicular Lymphoma International Prognostic Index (Blood 2004). Look out for it in Palmgear in a while. Users who have emailed me or sent me a postcard will be notified by email when it is ready for download.  

Oncalls: PDA sync

Spotted in Family Medicine Notes: OnCalls is a web based group practice call scheduling system. You can try out the demo by logging in with "demo" as the username and password. What is cool is that this system has a PDA sync system. I haven't tried it out yet but it suonds like it might be a handy solution for some group practices.

emSports

Skyscape has released on Palmgear another in their series in conjunction eith eMedicine: emSportswhich is their version of eMedicine Sports Medicine

Description:

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 115 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. This volume, authored and edited by 162 contributing physicians, is designed for use by practicing physicians, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions. This new version combines eMedicine's patented collaborative authoring technology with Skyscape's intelligent mobile solution to create the ultimate handheld reference in this specialty.

emENT

emENT has been released by Skyscape on Palmgear. emENT™ is the PDA version of eMedicine Otolaryngology & Facial Plastic Surgery

This is a completely current reference volume consisting of 404 comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. This volume, authored and edited by 446 contributing physicians, is designed for use by practicing physicians, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions. This new version combines eMedicine's patented collaborative authoring technology with Skyscape's intelligent mobile solution to create the ultimate handheld reference in this specialty.

Found in translation

MobileHealthData reports:

Waltham, Mass.-based CRF Inc., which offers PDA-based clinical trial software for patients and investigators, has contracted with SimulTrans to translate its software into other languages and provide support services to its international clients. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SimulTrans, based in Dublin, Ireland, already has done some translating for CRF, which has worked with research companies in 42 countries. CRF's wireless system enables clinical trial participants to keep an "e-diary" of their activities and log clinical information. Investigators and study coordinators also use PDAs to collect and edit patient data. For more information, visit www.crfhealth.com.

I suppose such trials would be successful only if PDAs were ubiquitous amongst the trial participants. Since PDA prices have dropped so much perhaps it would be a great incentive to recruit trial participants if one were to offer free PDAs!

OnTimeRx

OnTimeRx has been updated to version 2.4

Award-winning OnTimeRx® is a valuable healthcare tool developed by a pharmacist. *For people or for pets*, it works equally well on Treo 600s or basic Palm PDAs. Features pill reminder alarms for each drug dose and displays remaining Days Supply on each alarm screen. Schedule all To Do events, doctor appointments, and other healthcare activities in On Time Rx. With editable dropdowns and help TIPS throughout, OnTimeRx® is easy to customize for specific patient needs. It can also be localized for many other languages with International symbols.

Updates in v2.4 include:
Hi-Res Logo added - plus minor internal upgrades to
accommodate the latest devices from palmOne.
NEW Enhancements include:
* Lockout PIN# in Preferences for security
* Plain Icon in Preferences for privacy
* Alarm Mute - temporarily silence audible OTRx alarms for 1 to 3hrs
* Treo 600-Optimized to utilize 5-way nav and KeyGuard options.
* Doctor dropdown list
* Phone dropdown list
* Beamable Log Data - facilitates use in research*

I personally use OnTimeRx and I can vouch for its usefulness. In fact I have beamed the application over to patients who own PalmOS devices. It's great if your patient can objectively tell you his compliance rate which OnTimeRx generates with it's log :



Don't have a Palm? palmOne has a Special Offer: Medication Reminder Solution which bundles OnTimeRx with a Tungsten E (a great value PDA) or Zire31.

Blogroll update

Time to refresh the Palm Blogroll. Sammy has moved Palmaddicts to typepad so I have edited the link. It's a great site with updates like every hour or so! If you need your hourly Palm news fix, you know where to go :)
Added ERdoc, the "the chronicles of an emergency room doc and his palm handheld".
Anyone else not in the blogroll please let me know! Thanks.....

MedScore NS

MedScore NS 1.0 has been released by Emergency-nurse.org on Palmgear.com

This program contains calculators for over 20 vital medical and nursing scoring systems. It includes, among others, the following scores: Apgar, Ottowa Rules, Body Mass Index, Peak Flow, Waterlow, Trauma and Revised Trauma scores, and the TWEAK Alcohol score. Also included are drip and drop rate calculators, and the Parkland Burns formula. Full help system, including full Harvard referencing is included.

I notice Emergency-nurse.org also has a number of other software products for PDAs (webmaster please take note your product description cannot be displayed with Firefox but can be viewed with IE)

ePocrates 7.0 updates

ePocarates 7.0 has been released. The folks at ePocrates are constantly improving and adding new things to their excellent product. From their October Clinical updates:

Completion of Dermatology Additions Last month, we alerted you that our editors in Medical Information were working on making the coverage of dermatology monographs in ePocrates Rx more comprehensive. At the conclusion of this 3-month project, over 110 dermatology or topical products were added to the database, and many monographs were revised. Drug-Drug Interaction Categorization An important enhancement to ePocrates Rx version 7.0 is the drug interaction categorization feature. When viewing the drug interaction list for a drug in ePocrates Rx, or when viewing MultiCheck results, drug-drug interactions and drug-alt med interactions are now categorized under 5 bold headers: * Contraindicated * Avoid/Use Alternative * Monitor/Modify Tx * Therapeutic Advantage * Caution Advised

and more....

Peak flow

Spotted in PDA247:

Peak Flow 1.0 This program is ideal for nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists or anyone involved with Peak Flow measurement. Using height and age parameters, this calculator enables the quick, easy prediction of normal peak flow scores. It includes a fully featured database for storing scores. No extra files are required to run this product, but if you already have the NSB Runtime, you can download Peak Flow NS which is only 20k.

Not bad but it costs $7.50. Sorry to be a wet blanket but I do notice that Peak Flow prediction is available in the free Medcalc. Just a reminder - you can also save patient values in Medcalc and in effect it has a built-in tracking system for storing readings. Medcalc has also tons of other medical formulae.
Peak flow 1.0 would be better if it had a built-in charting module.

Press release: Mobile Partnership

Got this Press release in the mail:

Script IQ and IQMax's PDA-based Solutions Extend Formulary Management, Prescribing and Doctor-Connectivity Solutions to the Examination Room and Beyond SEATTLE, Oct. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- ScriptIQ and IQMax announced the signing of a strategic partnership to bring Script IQ's healthcare solutions to IQMax's mobile platform. Deployed at more than 6,000 users, Script IQ's solutions have helped medical groups evolve from paper-based systems in the key areas of formulary management, prescription ordering and physician connectivity, and the IQMax platform now extends that evolution to personal, handheld devices..... ..... IQMax has designed mobile platforms and solutions to arm healthcare users with reliable, robust and easily-adoptable applications that improve productivity and reduce costs without changing the fundamental practice of medicine. IQSpeak® (dictation) and IQCharge(TM) (charge capture) provide high value and "best in class" performance in either a wired or wireless environment. The addition of the highly successful Script IQ "Medication Management" and connectivity solutions are a natural addition to IQMax's Palm OS or Pocket PC-based solutions, helping medical groups comply with HIPAA security guidelines, including point-to-point encryption.

Medical Schools and PDAs

I don't sell off my PDAs - they become "hand-me-downs". I passed my IIIx to my nurse coordinator. My TT went to Mrs Palmdoc and my m515 went to my niece who is in Med school. My niece now finds the m515 insufficient for her needs and the battery is not that great anymore - she's now looking at a T|E as a replacement. Too bad the T5 is not worthy of an upgrade for me as a T3 user otherwise it would be another round of "hand-me-downs"! Many of my niece's classmates are getting PDAs too but her medical school has not officially embraced PDAs in their curriculum. Kind of behind the times I thought. Especially when you read of reports like Penn. Equips Students With Essentials

The University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine, Philadelphia, will distribute a new suite of PDA reference tools from San Mateo, Calif.-based ePocrates Inc. to all students on clinical rotations. Released this summer, the ePocrates Essentials package includes drug reference and dosing tools, disease treatment applications, and a laboratory test reference guide. The school also has subscribed to ePocrates Rx Online, a Web-based resource that students and faculty members can access to research up-to-date information on medications, diseases and other clinical topics.