Medcalc 4.3
Woohoo. Everyone's favorite freeware medical calculator, Medcalc, by Mathias Tschopp has just been updated.
Update Description:
v4.3 (04/30/03):
- Adds 1 formula (spirometric values)
- Improves infusion management tool (drugs can now be beamed)
- Fixes confusion between BUN and urea in a few formulas
- Improves pregnancy calculator (delivery date can now be changed)
- The usual bug fixes

Pump up with your Palm
There's a new fitness software for the Palm just released in Palmgear called PDAbs 3.4.6. Application description:
-Track your fitness routines: strength/resistance, aerobic/cardio, classes, runs etc.
-Input, archive, view and sort your progress - daily, weekly etc.
-Log your work out on the most common machines, in typical classes or with free weights
-Create new categories of exercises according to your needs and your personal goals
-Enter as many clients as you wish if you are a trainer, keep their profile and routines handy, print their exercises easily to track their progress
-Prepare your workout in advance
-Beam your workout or your client's workout to another PDA

This software does look interesting enough perhaps to get me out of couch-potato mode. However it is buy-ware rather than shareware - a real pity - so there's no way I or anyone else can test it out without purchasing it (unless I get my hands on a review copy!). Only way to gauge it seems to be users' ratings and curiously the range is from 1 star to 5 stars in Palmgear. Seems like users either like it or hate it. It's US$25.

Diet software shootout
Two recently updated software come to mind:


eDiet Manager now in version 3.21. This software is "designed to help users manage their daily nutrition, exercise, and health. It helps to set and achieve fitness and weight loss/gain objectives by providing the tools necessary to track and analyze users' daily records. The application helps you to create your personal diet profile and set your own targets for loosing, gaining and maintaining current weight. For targets created eDiet Manager offers daily nutrition schedule and keeps track of your meals. Dynamic change of schedule, according to the achieved results for each day."




Easy Health is now version 1.5 It's billed as a "Nutritional Organizer for the Palm OS. Count calories, vitamins, minerals, proteins and more with Easy Health. Comes complete with full food database, food log, expanded reference section and suggestions on how to improve your diet. Can be expanded and updated for ease of use. "






Both have been highly rated by users judging by their comments in Palmgear. eDietManager seems to do more than just manage your diet but also keep track of your weight. It's a little more expensive at US$19.95. Easy Health on the other hand is focused as a nutritional organiser and is easy to use. It has "favorites" so you can log these easily. It's also cheaper at US$ 9.95.
I think both have their pros and cons. They are both shareware so you can try before you buy. Both look terrific.

Watch your BMI
Not just another BMI calculator but this freebie also logs it. BMI logger's description:
BMILog is a Body Mass Index logger.
BMILog helps you keep track of your health with regards to your weight.
The Body Mass Index is a number indicating if you are at a healthy weight.
Data entry and readout can be in Cm/Kg or Lbs/feet+inch.
BMILog runs on any Palm OS 3.0 or better device and is free to use.

I think it wil be useful if you really want to keep track of your weight and BMI. Otherwise if you want to occasionally work out your BMI, use Medcalc.

Yet another fitness program
This one is freeware. Cal2cal corp has released FitnessWatch v1.1.0.
Description:
This tool lets you calculate:
- Ideal/Recommended Body Weight.
- Calorie Requirement.
- Body Mass Index (BMI).
It also allows you to calculate and plan daily reduction in calories intake for reducing your weight in multiple ways.
All you need to do is just feed your Sex, Height & Weight etc. to get calculated results.
A great tool for use as reference calculator. Works on any Palm OS v3.5 and above handheld device.

There are other fitness programs for the Palm out there. I haven't really checked them out as I am somewhat a couch potato. Perhaps someone can let me know what's the best fitness program for the Palm?

The Best US Hospitals
Someone with a bit too much time on his/her hands has uploaded a whole bunch of Best ... US Hospitals in various Palm database formats, including Handbase and Jfile, to Memoware. I suppose the info might be useful for patients and caregivers seeking "the best" whatever that is.......

Medcases and Unbound Medicine
Palm Boulevard has this article on Medcases, a medical e-learning company for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, offering the MedCases Medical Librarian. MedCases Medical Librarian will provide users a Web-based interface that integrates with Unbound Medicine's medical literature search services.
"These services provide the user with the ability to search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database, which includes MEDLINE, and publisher supplied citations. It will also provide users with up-to-date medical literature and can serve as a complement to MedCases' Web-based, medical education programs.
In the future, portions of the MedCases Medical Librarian are slated be delivered to Palm OS and Pocket PC devices via CogniQ, Unbound Medicine's mobile knowledge management platform. "

I thought the interesting bit was about CogniQ. This apparently is "a powerful mobile knowledge management platform that integrates handheld devices with the Web". Linking handheld applications to the web is a great idea especially that more and more wireless devices are coming up such as the recently launched Tungsten-C. We need more hot-spots!!

Anticoagulation guides for the Palm
I was looking out for these. Came across some:

Anticoagulation Clinic Datenbanken-1.0
This HanDbase product lets you track coumadin clinic information and allows you to take information with you. Enter data with pop-up fields that include indications and doses. In German which I don't spraken.
http://de.mobile.yahoo.com/010301/3/j3y.html


Anticoagulation Advisor
The dose selector portion of the ANTICOAGULATION ADVISOR ® is designed to help adjust the weekly dose of warfarin for patients on chronic warfarin therapy. The dose selector adjusts the weekly dose of warfarin based on practical. The dose selector will help determine the percentage of weekly dose changes and whether or not to hold dose(s) of warfarin.
This program is written in CASL which in it's current version does not support OS5. I could not test it out on my TT. I thought it was a bit pricey compared with the slide rule which the same company is selling!
http://www.medical-data-solutions.com/anticoagulation_advisor.htm


iSilo format Documents
These are free..
Management of Oral Anticoagulation with Warfarin
http://libraryinfo.bhs.org/secure/warfarin.pdb
Pre/Post Invasive Procedure Anticoagulation
http://libraryinfo.bhs.org/secure/anticoag.pdb


Heparin calculator
This shareware program is based on the weight based nomogram for initiating and adjusting IV Heparin dose published in Ann Intern Med 1993; 119:874-881.
Version 2.0 update allows the user to enter the control value for aPTT at his or her institution The nomogram is based on the Fifth ACCP Consensus Conference on Antithrombotic Therapy [CHEST 1998;114(suppl):439S-769S]. BODY WEIGHT-BASED DOSING OF IV HEPARIN
This update also includes the dosing and indication for Lovenox. As a safety feature, the program will also calculate creatinine clearance and warn users if creatinine clearance is < 30 mL/min. The information is based on package insert for Lovenox and Mosby's GenRx 11th edition.
http://www.tommybearsoftware.com/palmos.htm

Hmmm. Nothing ideal so far. Am contemplating writing something myself.......

Anaesthesia Medication Guide
LTC Thomas J. Evans, CRNA, USAF has released Anesthesia Medication Guide 1.0 in iSilo format. This guide is a reference of acceptable adult and pediatric doses of commonly used medications in anesthesia and critical care.
There are lots of medical databases and etext references which you can get from Memoware

Test your IQ on your Palm
I was wondering what applications exist out there. Not many, but they do exist - I found 4 to be exact.
IQ Test EU 2.0 from GD Prom is shareware.
Application Description:
This version of IQ Test consists of two different tests: Domino and EuroTest. Domino is a series of similar graphical questions that you can have fun solving. Time limit for this test is 8 minutes. This is a giveaway test and is not limited in any way in the Demo version. EuroTest however has a Demo limitation - it doesn't show the result. EuroTest is a standard European intellignence test. It measures IQs from 75 to 174. It consists of 33 questions divided into 5 parts. The time limit for this test is 20 minutes.





Then there is Shlomo Snyder's freeware IQ Test. Gee, I didn't realise I was a shlo-mo myself - my IQ kept testing as "lower than a rock" :(




Steven McDaniel produced High IQ 2.1 which is also freeware.
Description:
A game to test your knowledge, the problems are not simple and there are many choices to answer from.
See how smart you are.



And lastly, there's the D*lb*rt IQ-test 2.0

Application Description:
Before you ask your boss to promote you to the management level, be sure you've passed this test. Only the 'happy few' survived it and showed an IQ-level that matches your companies top-level.

I am happy to report with the last one my IQ is sufficently high enough to be promoted to managerial level! Ahhhhh, to be a pointy-haired boss :)

ChemoRxPlus problem
I tried ChemoRxPlus and I regret to report that the installation bombed out my Tungsten T. The stupid thing (maybe the Appforge installation?) kept going in an endless installation loop. Luckily I could do a warm reset without having to doa hard reset as a soft reset failed. This sucks. You have been warned....

The Doctor Database
Spotted The Doctor Database v1.0 in freewarepalm.com
Description:
With this program, you are going to be able to keep an extensive medical database:
- Your doctors'' names and specialities.
- Your doctors'' emergency phones.
- All the clinics and data about them.
- Your doctor appointments, with alarm to remember you.
- Your medicines, what dose and an alarm to remember you.
- All that information divided in tables for easier lookup.
- And the best of all is that it is FREE!

Actually I prefer to keep my contact database in the built-in address book (categorised into referring doctors, patients etc). I am a great fan of Agendus and I think Agendus is a really powerful tool to manage your appointments, contacts and has alarms for meetings and todos so little programs like this would not be of much use to me.
Then again, the author, Rodrigo Marban, is only 15 years old! From the list of software (homepage) he has created this young lad has lots of potential. Keep it up Rodrigo!!

Physicians Cut Loose
Palm Boulevard has a very interesting article on Doctors' going wireless in the practice. MDEverywhere is one such company which has this wireless vision. This is soooo cool.
Now I can't wait for my TT to be WiFi capable. SD? Guyver? Wifi case? These are the options which will be available soon. In the meantime for me it'll just be 'net access with my Palm but the work environment at my place is just too primitive, technologically speaking for what MDEverywhere envisages. Not for another 10 years at least :(

Cancer Staging and Treatment
Johnson Chong has recently released an updated version (2.5) of his excellent Cancer Staging and Treatment. This is an iSilo document containing the comprehensive information from Cancernet, National Cancer Institute, National institute of Health.
Some words from Johnson:
"The effort given in creating these file are hope to save clinician's time and provide a convenient way to review clinical information. Hoping all users also can collect and share useful clinical information to the community, encouraging quality clinical practice."
Well, some words from me:
Thank you very very much Johnson!!!

Journal to Go revisited
I used to subscribe to JournalToGo sometime ago - when it was first launched. It is like a medical journal equivalent of Avantgo. The site describes it service as such:
"Healthcare professionals can now easily keep current on medical literature and healthcare news. Selected medical journal abstracts and healthcare news articles are delivered to your handheld device or are accessible from your PC. This service is available at no charge."
Back then I gave up when I realised the abstracts were not updated frequently enough.
I decided recently to "give it a go" (no pun intended) again. I notice the software has been updated and there are more channels and journals now in the list. I was somewhat disappointed that for a major journal like the NEJM, there were only 2 abstracts. The navigation is still a bit kuldgy and I kept getting back to the front page. The TT's Dpad navigation buttons are not supported so one has to tap one's way thru.
Content is so-so. Will stick with it a bit longer to see if the abstracts are really updated weekly as claimed. I might just at the end of the day stick with the Reuters news channel. What the heck, it's free.

Chemotherapy and the Palm



Macromed has released ChemoRxplus which is an update to their old program ChemoRx which was released one year earlier . Being someone who administers chemotherapy (there now, a little clue to what I do), I have tried out ChemoRx when it was first released. I found it a little buggy but it was otherwise a great little freebie. The new one seems to require AppForge so I hope it is not too slow or require much memory. ChemoRxplus is freeware.





What other new Oncology programs are there? There's OncoMD, newly released from Skyscape. Seems like a handy oncology drug reference and there are also a fair number of chemotherapy protocols in the Table of Contents, where you can access the protocol outline. There are nice hyperlinks to relevant references in the literature . OncoMD costs US$65.

Differential Diagnoses on your Palm
While waiting for DiagnosisPro to be released in PalmOS format, I was scouting around for other DDx solutions. Stumbled upon PDxMD's website which has online Differential Diagnosis. They also have PDA versions both Palm and PPC. The Differential Diagnosis is a "drill down" type interface and selecting a symptom gives you a list of differential diagnoses. The important ones are high-lighted in red and clicking on any of the disorders gives you a brief description. There are also larger optional databases which gives you more detailed information on the disorders. The databases can be stored on SD cards.

This is pretty handy. I thought the authors could take it one step further by allowing one to select multiple symptoms and then narrow down the possible diagnoses from the database according to the symptoms selected. This would be pretty similar to a "slide rule" diagnosis device (the name of which I have forgotten) which I came across some 20 years ago.....

ICD 10 for HanDbase




Wow. Just what I wanted as I am a HanDbase user. Was hoping for this after Villarta released the MobileDB version (see a couple of postings earlier). Now Kron Emasiri has released ICD10HanDBase v1.0. I like HanDbase for it's ease of use. In version 3.0 you can store databases in your SD card so this will save a lot of precious memory. Kron has also released it in iSilo format, MobileDb format, and ThinkDb format. All freeware....

IMU Students PDA Group
Students from the International Medical University have had a PDA user group for some time now. Their IMU Pda page is chock-a-block with useful news, inforamtion and hint and tips for first time users. The forum section is a little quiet though and I think could do with a little more publicity and participation from the medical student community.I really think the Palm PDA is an essential tool for medical students and am glad that the IMU students' initiative is really taking off. Have added their site to the bookmarks at the left.

The SARS Hysteria
Hmmmph. Plum Networks has come out with this software called SARS Watch 1.0.
Application Description:
-Keep close watch on potential symptoms of SARS.
-Make notes about your travels and contacts for handy references.
-Make a unique and descriptive note for each user if you need to keep concurrent active watch entries for multiple family members.
-Convenient online information about SARS.

PlumNetworks is charging US$ 1.99 for this lemon! I really think such software unnecessarily feeds on people's anxiety. I also seriously doubt the usefulness of such software other than be a lame tool to educate the lay public on the symptoms. I think one can get much more useful information from the CDC SARS site.

Dial 911 for SARS Help
Skyscape has released for free .911 which is a resource that incorporates content from Outlines in Clinical Medicine/Medical Emergencies and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to provide medical professionals with the latest information on SARS and other potentially rapidly-spreading diseases, including bio-terrorism agents.

.911 includes all CDC-SARS health alerts, recommended responses, and an FAQ about SARS. The product also includes the latest information on signs and symptoms, treatments, as well as specific recommendations for prevention and control and will be updated frequently via Skyscape's smARTupdate (auto-update) routine to include all the constantly changing SARS information.

Other topics medical professionals can reference via .911 include information on bio-terrorist agents including Anthrax and Smallpox. This can serve as a reference for diagnosis to treatments to available vaccines, and provides doctors, nurses, EMTs and other medical professionals information on these new threats on via their handheld computers at the point of care.

DiagnosisPro for PalmOS
I mentioned on 10 March that the authors of DiagnosisPro hoped to release a PalmOS version by the end of March. Currently it is only for Windows and PPCs. Unfortunately it looks like the release will be delayed.
I really look forward to running that on my Tungsten T.

I am still waiting for the day I could do this with my Palm:

ICD
R L Villarta has released ICD 10 in MobileDB format. That's cool. In practice, usually I navigate to the disease in Skyscape's 5MCC and then scroll down to the misc section which has the ICD code (insurance companies here still request ICD 9) . Works for me most of the time. A quick search in Memoware shows there are lots of ICD9s in other formats but only one other ICD 10 in German.

I am aware of other ICD apps around. Which would you recommend?

SARS and all that
What's worse than living in the hotspot? Working in the hotspot and exposed to it, that's what! It would be worse if I were an ID chap. With sadness I read in Dobbs of a young medical officer in Singapore who contracted SARS and died. His mother is a GP in Johor who also contracted it. This is a tragedy.

I have been arming myself with info from the Web - and have been constantly referring to the CDC's Sars Info page. I have tried getting this page as a custom channel in Avantgo and I can tell you the formatting is not pretty. Ectopic Brain has pointed out (thanks Ectopic!) the free SARS for Physicians by Stephen Lapinsky, which is in iSilo format. The latest update is 4 April 2003.

Medical Mnemonics Revisited
Mnemonic
from Greek mnemon or mindful; (pronounced neh-MAHN-ik) is a word, abbreviation, rhyme, or similar verbal device you learn or create in order to remember something

Ahhhh to be a medical student again. Just yesterday, my wife's niece who is a medical student asked about a mnemonic for the cranial nerves. We vaguely recalled something about On Old Olympus.... Had to Google for it and was taken to MedicalMnemonics.com, a very cool site which I think will be extremely useful for medical students. This site has an amazing colleciton of mnemonics from many contributors. You can search by system and also part of the body (and also "G-rating"!).

Best of all there is a free downloadable PalmOS version of Medical Mnemonics. There are two sizes of databases for the application. An unabridged version, which contains the entire website, and a smaller abridged version for those with more limited space on their PDA. There are also Update Packs which are built using the new/updated mnemonics that people have shared by PDA and through the website. Update Packs are synced onto the PDA, which appends the new mnemonics to your existing customized database. A beam feature has also been written in, allowing beaming of a mnemonic entry to someone else nearby. If you don't want to install the program on your PDA, or if you are unfortunately a PPC owner, you could opt to get Medical Mnemonics as an Avantgo channel as well.

All in all, highly recommended.

Text entry systems
Always in a hurry? I seem to be rushed and it's not always that I have the PPK with me. Graffiti is a tad slow - maybe Graffiti II may be an improvement but in the meantime you might consider using Textplus or Wordcomplete. Both these programs anticipate what you write and will speed up text entry by showing you a pop-up list of words or phrases which by tapping on your choice, will speed up your text entry.
I personally prefer Textplus as it is very intuitive and best of all, has a specific Medical database which you can use in place of the general one. With Textplus anywhere, it will work in any of your applications which has text input using Graffiti. There doesn't seem to be any problems using it with the Tungsten T with Graffiti Anywhere installed.

PDA as a communication aid II
Riccardo Magni, the author of Communica, has emailed to inform me that his software will be developed further to include a "tree structure" organisation for the icons , and also a Windows program for the bitmap images. This all sounds good but it will be a commercial version (I guess it was too much to hope for it to remain free). They also will incorporate an interface to allow input from push button devices for the severely motor-impaired.
Their web page has a bit more information on Technological Aids for the Palm.
Interestingly there is another software listed there called Scrivo!
Description:
Alphabetic communication system based on PalmTM platform, it presents a virtual keyboard on the screen to compose words and phrases. The system can scan the keyboard (rows and colums) or (alternatively) allow a "direct selection" of symbols through the palm touch screen; the phrases composed will shift on the screen each time a special "bell" icon is selected (an audio signal is also produced). The scan speed is selectable independently for rows and columns and the scanning could be signaled by an audio tick. All the composed messages (day by day) can be memorised as "memo" for a next analysis (type of utilisation, psycology...): the text could be imported on a PC through the normal sync function.
A purposely developed interface permits to interface external sensors (like pushbuttons) to the palm system, allowing the utilisation of the system even by part of persons with severe motor impairment.

Software for the hypochondriac
I am amazed what developers will think of next.
This Palm program, Health Monitor 1.0, is a specialised symptom recorder.
Application Description:
Find out which activity could be responsible for your health symptom.Shows average severity by symptom.Records symptom name, date, time, activity, severity, and any notes you may have.Includes 2 free utilities which allow you to transfer to/from your PC and the other which lets you view or print the data on your PC.

I really don't know how useful such an application would be except for the hypochondriac!! If you want to record items with a datestamp and later export it or print it out, I think a generic journaling application like Daynotez would be better.

PDA as a communication aid

I have always thought that a PDA would make a wonderful aid for those with speech disabilities. The ones I know of tend to be expensive customised portable devices. There is one for WinCE called Winspeak but according to the authors, it's only for particular WinCE models and not for all PocketPCs at the moment.



I noticed this free Palm program called Communica which purports to aid communication using Icons on the Palm (no speech output). This seems to be a brilliantly simple concept and I wonder why no one else has implemented this before.
Description:
This program has been developed to explain the great chance that a useful PDA have to help people with reduced speech ability.
The program has been developed in PocketC and requires PocketC runtime (included in this zip).
The program acts as an iconic communicator system allowing to a person to transmit (by pressing the screen area) a concept or a feeling.

The icons are stored as "bitmaps" in Memopad. At the moment they are only in B&W. The interface is too simplistic. I prefer a menu driven type interface perhaps grouped by "themes" eg food, drink, emotions etc. But the program appears to be promising and hope the author can improve on it.

ObGyn programs
Not forgetting the ObGyn folks. OB Suite v5.2 is an updated freebie.
Description:
OB Suite includes a standard OB wheel, also calculates dates from US data.
Allows the practitioner to calculate when a patient will reach a certain geatational age, tracks OB patients, tracks inpatients, tracks procedures, and calculates Bishop score.

Update Description:
Several people have asked for security features to meet HIPPA regulations, since OB Patients holds patient information.

Version 5.2 Adds an optional security screen that the user can enable to pop up at start-up. The screen asks for a 5 digit security code prior to seeing patient data.

Pediatric programs
Pediatricians would be another group of doctors who would find a Palm useful since they often need to perform calculations and use formulaes in their work.
Spotted Peds Omnibus v2.0 in Freewarepalm.com
Description:
Calculates oral medication doses, IV medication doses, pediatric daily values (UOP in cc/kgday etc.), NICU daily values, tracks patients, has developmental mile stones, growth charts, and immunization schedules.

I downloaded and had a look at it. The interface looks to be a bit confusing to me (maybe not to a pediatrician!). The medication list looks very limited and you are better off using a proper drug database like ePocrates or Skyscape's A2Zdrugs. Growth charts are tables and don't seem to depend on the figures you input for individual patients. I didn't like it but you may give it a test ride. After all it's free.

For growth charts, you might want to consider the free Growth Charts from Statcoder.
I carry this in my Palm and find it very useful.
This program calculates growth percentiles based on the June 2000 revision of the CDC Growth Charts for the United States. It includes new body mass index-for-age charts. Enter the age in years and months using the pop-up lists. The weight, height, and head circumference can be entered in using graffiti. Be sure to select the correct metric or English units. Select the correct sex and indicate whether height is standing if applicable. If head circumference is included, HC-Age percentile is presented. If no head circumference is input (non-infants), BMI-Age percentile is included if applicable. Press the Calc button to perform the calculations.

EKG/ECG Interpretation



It may not be real-time but at least this freebie, Ekg-wave, helps one interprete various ECG abnormalities. I guess it would be too much to hope for a software-hardware combo for the Palm which can record the ECG and perform real-time analyses! Now that would be a powerful tool.....

Review of Handheld Software for Medical Professionals

Got this email recently:

--------------------------------
Hi,

I wanted to inform you about the availability of our review of handheld software for medical professionals. Our reviews are available for free download at the links below. We hope that you may consider posting these links on your site.

“Palm Reading”: 2. Handheld Software for Medical Professionals.

Feisal Adatia, Philippe L. Bedard

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/168/6/727.pdf

This is a follow up to our article:

“Palm reading”: 1. Handheld hardware and operating systems.

Feisal A. Adatia, Philippe L. Bedard

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/167/7/775.pdf

Both of these articles are also available in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) which is mailed to over 60,000 subscribers. The full text free electronic version www.cmaj.ca has about 100,000 user sessions each week. The Journal's Impact Factor is 2.8 making it the 5th leading international general medical journal.

I hope that you enjoy the articles,

Feisal Adatia.
------------------------------

Well, I downloaded the review and glancing thru it, it looks good. Quite alot of recent stuff covered here and would make good reading for health professionals new in the Palm/PDA arena. Worth a read IMO.

Medical Approaches
Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli emailed me about his free medical textbook Medical Approaches, a resource "for juinor doctors by juinor doctors". It requires the Mobipocket reader. I have downloaded the book but have been unable to download the latest Mobipocket reader as the website was down the last couple of days. The book looks interesting and I hope to review it a bit later.
Here's the description from their website:

As young doctors we have to transform from being knowledge capacitors to clinical decision makers. A clinical decision about a problem just can't be made until one has reasonably reduced the diagnostic uncertainty about it and appreciated the utility or the dysutility of action. One just can't do this unless one has a structure which guides one through the problem allowing one to rapidly and reliably arrive at a set of diagnostic hypotheses which one can work with. The Approaches Project is designed with this in mind. We have constructed a set of "Approaches" to common symptoms, signs and clinical states that serve as "frames" for starting clinical reasoning and decision making. They are informal guides that help one navigate through a problem, reduce its diagnostic uncertainty and select a reasonable course of action. The content is unoriginal - it is synthesised from scattered sources (see references) and may be seen as the hand-me-downs of seasoned physicians combined with guidance from systematic studies. What we have tried to do is organise the approaches with a unified structure in mind and for the needs of a doctor starting out (we started them as final year medical students) and put them into a single resource freely available for all.

The approaches are designed to cross-refer and cut across specialty divisions and clinical settings. This associative structure is aided greatly by hyperlinks and aims to simulate the way that effective clinicians have their knowledge organised.

Dr James Bailey MBBS
Dr Anatole Menon-Johansson MBBS
Dr Gareth Owen MBBS
E-mail - editors@medicalapproaches.org

Medical Stats Calculator for the Palm
Statistics lie at the heart of evidenced based medicine. Doctors need to understand stats in their work and in their assessment of published studies.
I am aware of these two Palm OS applications for stats calculation:


Journal Club v2.0
Description:
Journal Club calculates common statistics and defines common statistical terms.
Version 2 includes a Windows desktop, which lets you do the same calculations on your computer.
A Palm Os 5 version is planned for 7/03
(I haven't evaluated Journal Club since there isn't an OS5 version yet)

EBM Caculator
EBM Calculator is designed to calculate relevant statistics for Diagnostic studies, Prospective Studies, Case Control Studies, and Randomized Control Trials (RCT). This is a palm version of the Stats Calculator.

Both of these are freeware.
What would be really nice if there were some stats program for the Palm which could run off the data present in an existing Palm table eg Handbase or Docs2Go Spreadsheet. Otherwise what I normally do is collect data in Handbase, export to Excel and then run SPSS on the data.....

US to Test Bioterror Alerts on Doctors' PDAs
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government said Friday it will begin testing a system using handheld personal digital assistants, or PDAs, to deliver urgent messages to doctors, nurses and other health-care workers in the event of a biological attack.
The three-month test will evaluate how often health-care workers download the information to their handheld devices and whether they find the system useful, the Department of Health and Human Services said.
The project will be tested with health-care workers who use a system created by ePocrates, a privately held company based in San Mateo, California, that sends alerts to more than 700,000 health-care workers, including more than 250,000 doctors, an HHS statement said.
A test messages will contain a memo about particular biological agents and Web links to information about diagnosing and treating related conditions, the health agency said. Health-care workers will be able to save the information to their PDAs for future reference.

Source: Yahoo News


Hmm. All I can say is: cool!

Medical Hardware Add-Ons
This may be somewhat old news but I think its worth mentioning again. The Palm may turn out to be a useful portable medical monitoring tool. If you are a physician on the go, it would be quite handy to know precisely what rhythm that irregular pulse is. This is where ActiveEcg comes in.
Description:
ActiveECG is used to record and display ECG (electrocardiogram, EKG) strips for the purpose of analyzing heart rhythms and performing a quick assessment of a patient's cardiac health. The ECG strips can be transferred to a Windows compatible PC where a report can be displayed and printed or forwarded to a physician or other medical professional
Great idea.
I wish there were more hardware add-ons for the Palm. One I could do with is a portable pulse oxymeter - a clip on device which interfaces with the Palm. The Sa02 readings are recorded in the Palm and the database can later be retrieved in the PC. Graphical displays of trends would be useful too.

Your Palm and that glass of wine
Drinking and driving don't mix. That we know (or at least I hope you do).
There are formulae out there such as "Widmark's formula" which can estimate the blood alcohol content after a certain number of drinks.

Someone has come out with a program for the Palm, Alcootest, which can do so.

Decription:
Alcootest is a software that allows you to assess the waiting time you need before driving your vehicle after having taken some alcohol.It takes into account the kind and quantity of the beverage absorbed, the sex and weight of the person in order to obtain an alcoholic rate lower than 0.5 gr.However, other factors may intervene to influence this minimum waiting time.This must only be considered as a piece of information. Nevertheless, there is but one rule : Drink or drive, the choice is yours.

Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook


Sigh. Now that Bush has issued an ultimatum, I think war is an eventuality. Special Forces must already be operating in Iraq.

As an aside, I wonder whether the Special Ops guys carry PDAs with them?
There's an interesting Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook from Skyscape with information on how to handle medical emergencies.

Description

Special Operations Forces Medical Handbook for the Palm OS and Windows CE offers the user the most incredible single-source resource of medical information written in plain straightforward language.

-Treatment protocols are organized by symptoms and affected organ system. Features:
-Heavily illustrated with anatomical drawings and full-color images which assist in identifying dermatologic conditions, insect bites, stings, and exposure problems.
-Specialty areas such as trauma, infectious disease, toxicology and more
-Step-by-step illustrated critical procedures, surgeries and basic medical skills under hostile and/or primitive conditions.
-Specific environmental hazards including altitude and temperature related illness, chemical injuries and exposures.
-Extensive Index

Full of practical emergency information about coping with any kind of medical emergency in less than optimum situations. Created by Editorial Staff of the Special Operations Command, Office of the Command Surgeon and over 80 medical specialists from all branches of the military, as a primary medical training resource and field guide for the Special Operations Command. It is the work of 70 contributors both from the military and civilian practice.

Palm reminder for Medication
One fellow KVPUGer told me he was thinking of programming something for the Palm in order to remind himself to take medication on time. I told him there's already software out there which can do this. I did test out On-Time-Rx, a software programmed by a Pharmacist which comes with a medication schedule complete with alarms which you can carry with you in your PDA.
Taken from a review on On-Time-Rx:
"Requiring just 96k of memory, the On-Time-Rx software sets the user's Palm or similar device to beep when it's time to take medicine and vitamins and record which doses were taken and which ones were skipped. It displays the form, dosage, route, and indication for all mediations. Handling up to 200 alarm events per day, it also signals when it's time to get scripts refilled and the 911 feature stores a complete medical history. It will even beep so Fido can get his heartworm pills on time."
Is it really useful? Personally I think blister pack medication with dates are more handy but as many medicines don't come in that form of packing, software like On-Time-Rx may be a useful reminder. It also helps you keep track of missed doses.
You can download a 30-day trial here.

e-Books
When it comes to reading e-books, it's definitely easier on a PDA compared with a PC, either desktop or notebook. For the latter, you are stuck in one position. You have to put up with boot-up times.
With the Palm, it's "instant on". Recent e-books I have read include Michael Crichton's Prey which is excellent reading. Interesting to note that "swarming" by robotic life-forms is actually a possibility now.

Spotte this free e-Handbook on Pregnancy in freewarepalm.com
Description:
"The Prospective Mother", by J. Morris Slemons in Palm Reader eBook format.
A Handbook For Women During Pregnancy.

Body Mass Index Calculators

Definition: Body Mass Index (BMI) is a relationship between weight and height that is associated with body fat and health risk.
The equation is BMI = body weight in kilograms/height in meters squared.
Research has identified the health risks associated with a wide range of BMIs (both high and low values.)
Obesity is taken to start at a BMI of 30 and gross obesity at 40

If you want a free calculator to work out your Body Mass Index, you can check out BodyMI from Freewarepalm.com
Description:
Worried about your weight?
BodyMI is a program for calculating personal body mass indexes and interpreting both them and the concept of body mass index in general.

If you want a more powerful all in one free medical calculator utility, get Medcalc. This has BMI, Body surface area and much much more. I personally find Medcalc invaluable in daily practice.
Introduction
MedCalc is a medical calculator running on Palm-compatible handheld devices ( Palm, Sony, Handspring, Handera, and more... ). It is designed for rapid calculation of common equations used in medicine (including anesthesiology, pediatrics, emergency, intensive care and internal medicine).



Medcalc Features

-free
-easy to use
-frequently updated (see version history)
-comprehensive (75 formulas and counting, see complete list)
-formulas sorted by categories (including a fully customizable favorite category)
-units available either in S.I. or local units (defaults can be set for each item)
-most formulas come with bibliographic references and clinical tips
-includes (no need for commercial alternatives):
-full-featured infusion management tool
-pregnancy wheel
-results can be saved for later retrieval
-available in english, french and spanish versions
-fully compatible with Palm OS 5 (with high-density application icon)
-takes advantage of HandEra 330's QVGA capabilities (increased resolution and virtual silkscreen area)

MedCalc is a well-established tool used daily by thousands of physicians all over the world. It is distributed amongst other clinical tools in many hospitals and has received many favorable reviews

eponym
noun
1 a name, esp. a place name, derived from the name of a real or mythical person, as for example Constantinople from Constantine I
2 the name of the person from which such a name is derived
example: in the Middle Ages, ``Brutus'' was thought to be the eponym of ``Britain.''
[ETYMOLOGY: 19th Century: from Greek eponumos giving a significant name]
"epo'nymic adjective

Medical eponyms are a plenty - they are sometimes obscure and it may be difficult to remember what they relate to.
Andrew Yee MD has come to the rescue with his Eponyms v1.68 available from Freewarepalm.com.
Description:
Rovsing's sign? Virchow's node? Here is a list of over 1,375 medical eponyms, common and obscure, with descriptions.
Update Description:
v1.61-1.68 (3/10/03):
- Added over 175 more eponyms since ver 1.5, corrected some spelling errors; over 1375 eponyms total.
- Minor improvement with navigation in ver 1.68 for Palm OS 5.0 (mainly scrolling up and down after look up).
- New icons thanks to Dr. Karam with 1.65.

It's available in Doc and Jfile formats.

Palm or PocketPC?
The eternal debate. As a long time PalmOS user, I may be a little biased ;). But Handheldmed has this little shootout which seems pretty balanced to me. I think the bottm line is that PalmOS is for serious PDA work. PPC is for tinkering around (with add-ons) multimedia. PPCs have the edge in WiFi - that is until the much awaited WiFi SD cards are available.

I still prefer a device which is small, good battery life, able to launch basic PIM functions with speed and no fuss navigation to get at applications quickly. Multimedia is not important for medical palm computing. There used to be many more Medical apps for PalmOS than PPC but PPC is fast catching up. At the end of the day we are spoilt for choice.

Diet with the help of your Palm?

I am kinda sceptical this is possible. At the end of the day, humans are humans. After the work-out in the gym you are still gonna be tempted by the delicious nasi lemak. Well, on the other hand, I guess having some data in the palm of your hand would be a grim reminder on what you should and shouldn't do!!
Here's info on eDiet Manager from Palm Boulevard
Description:
eDietManager application was designed to help users manage their daily nutrition, exercise, and health. It helps to set and achieve fitness and weight loss/gain objectives by providing the tools necessary to track and analyze users' daily records.
The application helps you to create your personal diet profile and set your own targets for loosing, gaining and maintaining current weight. For targets created eDietManager offers daily nutrition schedule and keeps track of your meals. Dynamic change of schedule, according to the achieved results for each day.
eDietManager supports extensive libraries of various foods and sport activities. 734 foods are maintained in 22 basic categories. Calories and fats contents for each food is provided. Choose among 84 different sports. eDietManager allows you to create your own definitions for foods and sports. Use the daily chart to view your progress. The weight for a particular day is compared to the desired target weight. eDietManager is your personal assistant on your way to healthy nutrition, always helpful and at hand!

Breaking news....DiagnosisPro will be released soon for the Palm platform. I emailed the authors and was pleased to hear from them they have developed and tested this on a Sony Clie. They hope to release the PalmOS version by the end of March!!

Description:
DiagnosisPro, developed by Dr. Charles Meader, a board certified internist and Dr. Hugo Pribor, an internationally recognized clinical pathologist, is today’s most powerful, interactive tool which allows you to quickly generate differential diagnosis, based on multiple entries. By entering findings such as signs, symptoms, lab values, X-ray or EKG results, DiagnosisPro generates a hierarchical list of diseases from its database of 10,000 diseases, 20,000 findings and 250,000 relationships.

This comprehensive program provides a detailed review of each disease, including clinical presentations, abnormal lab values, rule-outs, complications, treatments and much more. It also includes 15,000 ICD and CPT codes, a hot link to MEDLINE, and a hot link to Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine CD-ROM. You can also compare the characteristics of any 2 diseases side by side.

Wifi Wifi everywhere. This is the year of wireless networking. We have Time Broadband, Airzed, TM Hotspots, Maxis. We have succesfully got Wifi up at my workplace for the medical staff. Now I can access the Internet from my clinic and staff room. I am wishing for the day when I can access lab results, imaging reports, records on my notebook too! But I guess that is wishful thinking, not for another 5-10 years I'll bet.
Back to the Palm. With WiFi being a "hot" thing now, I am getting impatient for WiFi SD cards. Sandisk has announced the impending release of their version of WiFi SD cards soon so I guess it won't be long now. Bluetooth which is what the TT has is cool - I use it mainly for SMS but Internet access via GPRS costs a bomb here so it really isn't feasible apart from the occasional email. So it's back to WiFi. Please launch the card soon, Sandisk!!

Planning pregnancy with your Palm?
Spotted NFP v2.0 in Freewarepalm.com.
Description:
A Palm OS program for tracking fertility, known as the Sympto-thermal Method, Fertility Awareness Method, Natural Family Planning, or Billings Method.
NFP allows a woman or a couple to track her fertility using a set of simple daily measurements.
NFP can be used either to avoid or achieve pregnancy.
It can be an effective chemical-free method of contraception, or it can be an inexpensive method of conception.

I really don't know how effective the Billings Method is nor the accuracy of the implementation of the BM with this program so use at your own risk. The Billings Method was developed by Drs. John and Evelyn Billings of Australia. You can get more information from their website.

Track your Blood Pressure
Source: Palm Boulevard
UTrackSys.com Adds Features to Blood Pressure Tracker
UTrackSys.com has released version 1.1 of its Blood Pressure plug-in for its Universal Tracking System for the Palm OS.
The plugin is designed to help Palm OS users track blood pressure and pulse measurements, offering. various interactive charts, reports, and filters, as well as the ability to export data to UTS database and to Excel through a conduit.
According to the company, the new version extends the flexibility of its blood pressure and pulse charts. Now users can setup axis bounds, define scale parameters, customize grid options and other charting preferences.

All this sounds cool. Checking out the UTS webpage you can see that the program gives you a nice way to keep a record of blood pressure and also outputs line and bar charts as well.
I think the UTS would be great for things also like blood sugar monitoring, INR records, Peak flow measurements and other medical measurements.
What would be even better IMO, would be a hardware interface - a Blood Pressure measuring device which can plug into the Palm and the UTS takes the reading and date/time stamps it. Now that would be even more cool.

Medical e-books
Sigh. So may Palm e-book formats - Doc readers, Tomeraider, Tealdoc. But I think the best-of-the-best has got to be iSilo. It's got good compression, speed, great handling of files stored on the memory card and converts text and HTML to a format which is highly readable. It also can read standard Doc files too so you get teh best of both worlds.
If you like iSilo, there's a large repository of medical e-books which you may want to check out:
Medical iSilo Depot
There are of course other medical e-books you can get from Memoware

One of the early adopters of PDAs amongst the medical community would be anaethetists and intensivists. No suprises here since often complex decision making and calculcations are necessary in the ICU.
ICU Math 1.0 is freeware and available for download here

Description:
50 adult ICU applications that assist with 78 medical equations.

Including pulmonary, cardiac, BNP CHF nomogram, pharmacokinetic drug dosing, renal, electrolytes, nutrition, TPN, biostatistics, unit conversions, rules of thumb, plus an RPN scientific/financial calculator.

Sign of the times?
The start of the 21st century hasn't been brilliant. Warfare, terrorism and all sorts of cruelty and evil abound.
Duct tape and plastic sheets obviously ain't enough. You can arm your PDA with info to help you:
1) eMedicine.com, the publisher of the world¹s largest online, current medical reference, has compiled its extensive collection of terrorism-related medical content into a free PDA eBook for medical professionals and the public. This customized book fills recent requests for a reliable information source following the recent terrorist attacks . The PDA reference includes nearly 2,000 pages of the most current information on Trauma, Terrorism, and Biochemical and Radiologic Warfare. The book is designed for field and hospital work and will run on both PALM and Pocket PC PDAs.

2) 1st AID v1.4 (also free ) has been updated to include a Terrorist Incidents section .

If you are a radiologist or trainee in the field, you might appreciate the handy info on your Palm from PocketRadiologist. The demo pages look impressive and there seems to be a wealth of information available in various categories like Brain, Musculoskeletal etc.
I tried to download and run the demo on my Tungsten and sadly it crashed. Maybe the application is not fully OS5 compatible yet.

PDAlive has this snippet about PatientKeeper offering medical dictation and transcription facilities. This area has always been the bane of medicos. I have gone down this path before using an Olympus digital voice recorder and software to convert speech to text (the Olympus bundles IBM's ViaVoice). I found it kinda cumbersome and at the end of the day, my trusty m515 and PPK was a much faster solution. Printing the letters via IR to my Canon IR printer too is a breeze. Now with my Tungsten T, I am still doing the same thing. But as the TT has Voice Recording, I may try out the dictation thing again. I am not sure how PatientKeeper will offer their services based on handhelds but my guess is it would be based on PDAs with voice recording facilities.

The Palm and Insomnia

Here are two things which may help you if you can't sleep (using your Palm of course):

1) Sheep counter

Description:
Finally, the traditional ''falling asleep'' remedy is available for Palm.
Don''t buy expensive beds or use uncomfortable leg pillows, download this program onto your Palm and you will have a restful night sleep or triple your money back ($0.00 x 3 = $0.00).

2) Load an extremely boring e-book into your Palm and begin reading.......

Added chatterbox today....

The PDA marches on in the medical field.....

Handhelds and Healthcare Innovation

Healthcare organizations are turning to Handheld computers to streamline business processes and improve overall patient care. Using Palm handheld computers, healthcare providers can access and manage critical information at the point of care, where decision support is so critical.

Palm's focus on promoting solutions that assist in addressing critical healthcare issues -- patient safety, quality of care, decision support, HIPAA compliance, security -- has made the company a leading handheld provider for the healthcare industry. And because the open, flexible platform integrates easily with existing technology infrastructures, Palm handhelds also have become the preferred choice among healthcare administrators and IT managers. ......


Read the full article in Palminfocenter

Wouldn't I love to have a prescription writing utility on my Palm. This would save lots of time especially when it comes to repeat prescriptions. There's also the real possibility of drug interactions and the software could provide warnings as well as pick up dosing errors (hey, doctors are human).




But I guess all this is a dream until the hospital where I work updates its antiquated HIS, LIS and its overall IT system. Medcheck looks like on interesting piece of software

Of course there is the big advantage of e-prescriptions. It would do away with the problem of bad doctors' handwriting ;)

What's your cholesterol level? Have you checked it lately? And if you have, how do you interprete it? Your doctor would likely be following the latest guidelines - ATPIII. Now the Palm comes to the rescue, simplifying the algorithm using the current guidelines. And if your doctor has not heard of ATP III:
1) find a new doctor
2) tell your doctor to get a Palm

Stat Cholesterol has been updated
Download from Freewarepalm.com

First Aid on your Palm

"This software offers useful information to help you deal with common urgent and emergency care situations, ranging from a nosebleed or sunburn to a life-threatening heart attack or stroke."


Yeah true. But bandages are not included, that's for sure!
However it's nice to see freebies like this for the Palm. You can get it from FreewarePalm.com

Back from a week's vacation.

What's new in the Palm Medical PDA World? Skyscape has come out with 5 Minute Clinical Consult 2003 and it is not 2003 yet! Looks like a major revamp. Images now optional.:
Description

5MCC™ 2003 is the handheld version of Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2003, an invaluable and unique clinical reference for students and practitioners. It covers thousands of topics that are indexed with terms and medications so that you can find the information in a quick and professional manner. Review the Basics, Diagnosis, Differential diagnosis, Treatment, Medications, Follow up, and important miscellaneous considerations when you use this reference on your favorite handheld device.

Download a trial

Diagnose problems with a Palm Handheld
Ok so its car engines:

"B&B Electronics has released version 2 of its AutoTap for Palm software. AutoTap software and its hardware component (AutoTap scan tool) allows the user to diagnose engine problems, monitor engine performance and clear the Check Engine light right from a Palm OS devcie. The company said version 2 adds new features that include graphing, gauges, large displays, color and more user-configurable screens.

According to the company, the AutoTap scan tool connects a special OBD II plug-in-port on or under the dash of your car or light truck to your handheld. The AutoTap scanner then reads the signals from your vehicle's computer-controlled sensors and displays right on the device. With AutoTap for Palm, users can view and log real-time generic OBD II parameters as well as view generic and enhanced diagnostic trouble codes. "

Hmmm, if only someone will comeout with a plugin module for patients.......

Source: Palm Boulevard

Medrules revisited

It's been sometime since I last tried out this freebie. It's great and now in version 3.0 has been enhanced further by the author, Kent E. Willyard MD.



It's now OS 5.0 compatible! Download from Ectopic Brain

What does the future hold for computers in healthcare for 2003? The crystal ball foretells:

Seven Key Physician Market Trends in 2003

· ROBUST PRACTICE WEB SITES EMERGE: Among all U.S. practicing physicians, 34% reported having a practice Web site in 2002. More than two-thirds of US physicians expressed an interest in having a Web site in the future. Data from the latest Cybercitizen®
Health research show a dramatic increase in the consumer use of practice Web sites,demonstrating a strong value proposition to physician end users.

· PDA AND HANDHELD COMPUTERS COME OF AGE: Approximately 35% of practicing physicians are actively using a PDA. Almost two-thirds of physicians using a PDA are actively using an Rx reference database on their PDA. In addition to the increased adoption of these mobile devices in general, improvements in the form factor and underlying technology, as well as the competitive pricing of new Windows devices, will drive significant growth and value in this market segment.

· INTEGRATED ELECTRONIC PHARMACEUTICAL DETAILING BECOMES A
REALITY: Thirty-six percent of primary care physicians have already participated inelectronic detailing programs offered by pharmaceutical companies. More than 80% expect of current users expect to participate in the next 12 months. The difference in 2003 will be a growing number of pharmaceutical companies realize the value of integrating the detail rep with extended online capabilities – as a compliment (and not a replacement) to the relationship.

· SOME SPECIALISTS BECOME VERY DEPENDENT ON THE WEB: Targeted segments of practicing physicians, such as information intensive groups including Oncologists, Neurologists, and Rheumatologists, become very dependent on the Web in 2003 as a critical source for the latest clinical news and pharmaceutical information.

· PATIENT CONNECTIVITY STILL ON HOLD: Despite consumer demand to “connect” with their physicians online, the evolution of the virtual online consult remains in a holding pattern as a majority of physicians are still waiting for an economic argument to participate.
However, pilot projects underway (funded by insurers in many cases) will begin to justify the value proposition to the payer community – in turn generating a greater general understanding of the offline impact of online consults.

· HEALTH PLAN PORTALS BECOME A VIABLE CUSTOMER SERVICE OPTION:
Following years of building online service solutions, and spurred by pending HIPAA deadlines, a majority of health plans finally deliver valued-added online solutions to participating providers in their physician networks. Building on administrative applications, early innovators also begin to roll out the first edition of e-care applications to support comprehensive patient care.

· E-PRESCRIBING RESURFACES … UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT: After a very tough
year, electronic prescribing makes a comeback with new backers. After a failed attempt by umerous pharmaceutical companies to gain control over the prescribing process at the point f care (through third party investments), the true beneficiaries of electronic prescribing insurers and PBMs) begin investing in more projects to demonstrate and capture the economic benefit (such as increased Rx formulary compliance).

source: manhattanResearch

Earning CME credits with your PDA
Eventually compulsory CME will come to Malaysia. There is online CME being trialled by MMA. It would be even more handy if we could do this away from our desktop PCs i.e. from our handhelds.

This is not science fiction but now reality and happening in USA.
"Physicians who use handheld computers to access evidence-based medical information while caring for patients will now have the opportunity to earn continuing medical education (CME) credit for their efforts. The American College of Physicians- American Society of Internal Medicine (ACP-ASIM) announced its participation in a pilot program with the American Medical Association (AMA) to provide AMA PRA category 1 CME credit to physicians using PIER(TM), ACP-ASIM's evidence- based clinical decision support tool, integrated with TouchWorks clinical software from Allscripts Healthcare Solutions. "

Source: Palm Boulevard

Hmmm. Complementary medical software seems to be making its way into the PalmOS arena now. Spotted this on the web:



Acupressure & Do-in for PalmOS

"Acupressure & Do-in" is an easy-to-use guide for everyday acupressure. While not in any way a replacement for professional medical care or emergency medical treatment, it is very useful for relieving minor to moderate symptoms and pains, and can be used to supplement other medical care. First, select the most appropriate body area (Head, Trunk, Limbs or Body/Anywhere), then navigate the list of symptoms to the one best describing your complaint. Acupressure & Do-in provides a list of pressure points, with descriptions and illustrations.

Debateable whether on not it (accupressure, not the software!) works. But at least its freeware....

Drug References in Your Palm
Indispensible. ePocrates is free. A2Z Drugs from Skyscape is also very good. Trouble with both ePocrates and A2ZDrugs is that they are based on the American Formulary so some of the medications prescribed in Malaysia are not listed. However the easiest workaround I find is the use the online DIMS which you can get from Atmedica. A2ZDrugs has a Personal section where you can add your custom drugs. By simple Cut & Paste you can add the drugs not listed into the Personal section of A2Z making it as complete as can be!

Handheld Computers for Health Workers in Africa

I am impressed that the medical PDA usage in Africa continues to show great promise. This is technology put to good use!!

"A Red Cross volunteer in Ghana stared in surprise when the screen on his PDA first lit up, but during a training session laughed and said, “I had never touched a computer an hour ago, but now I can use one!” He was one of 30 volunteers working with SATELLIFE, and organizaion with the mission to improve health in the world's poorest nations through the use of information technology, and the American Red Cross (ARC) in their Measles Initiative, which aims to vaccinate at-risk children across Africa. This in turn was part of a larger project conducted by SATELLIFE to test PDAs as a tool for data collection and information access in Africa"

read more in Palm Boulevard

"Natural" Medicine on your Palm

Increasingly Medical Doctors have to be aware of the nature of alternative medicines their patients are taking. I have had on numerous occasions the need to check up possible adverse effects and drug interaction with herbs and what not. Now Skyscape has come up with new databases on "Natural" medicines to enable physicians to look these up "on the go".


Skyscape, a provider of healthcare-based mobile solutions, has announced three new natural medicine and alternative therapies references for PDAs, including the Guide to Popular Natural Products (GNP) published by Facts and Comparisons, a complete version of Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database published by Therapeutic Research Corporation and the Nursing Herbal Medicine Handbook published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Skyscape's solutions are available on multiple platforms, including Palm OS, Windows CE, and Pocket PC.

According to the company, its titles are PDA versions of the same medical reference publications used by physicians and other healthcare practitioners. Skyscape said its smARTlink technology enables end users to seamlessly connect with other medical references loaded onto their PDAs, allowing them to move in real time from diagnosing to determining treatment options and potential drug interactions and now between natural products and traditional drug therapies. The new natural medicine and alternative guides are slated to be available over the next several weeks.

source: Palm Boulevard

Been working out lately? Mens Sana In Corpore Sano....

For those of you using threadmills as part of the workout session, this Brighthand article is interesting -

"Handheld devices operating with Palm OS software can exchange -- or "beam" -- workout data to and from the Star Trac Pro Elite treadmill console. This capability, created by software programmer Jay Wright, CEO of SingleTap, offers the unique ability to accurately monitor exercise performance over time. In development for more than a year, SingleTap and Star Trac found research that revealed many treadmill users were also handheld device owners"
This cool! And what's more, you can even upload your own exercise programme:
"Users also can create their own custom workouts on the handheld and "beam" them to the treadmill. In the future, ready-made workouts will be available online as well. Users will be able to use self- or professionally-designed workouts based on individualized fitness goals."

The object of my desire......

When will they:

1) Come out with an Avantgo which is OS5.0 compatible
2) Release the promised MP3 player
3) Lower the price.......

What's the PDA usage like in your workplace?
At the hospital where I work, there are 100+ staff specialists.
The breakdown of PDA usage is as follows:

Total No. of PDA Users - 19
Palm OS - 15 (m5xx series - 7, Vx -2, m130-1, Clie -3, Visor -2)
PPC - 4 (all iPaqs)

Looks like PalmOS is the dominant one......

If you're in a hospital ever notice the increasing use of PDAs amongst colleagues? You might have noticed they are also being used by the Pharma sales force (IIANM those dealing with Zuellig) - they can tally and report their visits electronically on their Palms and upload the data later. It's happening foks - the PDA revolution is here!
And here's yet another example of PDA usage in the field:

Mobility Electronics Palm Cradle Helps with Clinical Trials

Mobility Electronics has worked with Palm, Inc. to design a modem cradle for Document Solutions Group (DSG), a company that specializes in clinical trial electronic data collection. DSG plans to use Mobility Electronics Portsmith subsidiary’s device-specific modem cradles with Palm handheld computers to capture Patient Diary clinical data for pharmaceutical companies.

According to DSG, it offers its pharmaceutical clients Palm handheld computers configured to collect trial-specific information. The companies said that through these devices, physicians and sponsor personnel, such as monitors, can track subjects' reactions to investigational drugs in real time, providing trial sponsors with more accurate data faster. Subjects record their reactions on the handheld and transmit the data by placing the device in Portsmith's modem-equipped cradle. The data is then uploaded into DSG's CRFs (Case Report Forms) in either a stand-alone diary database or through DSG's eCaseLink electronic data capture software and can be viewed by sites and sponsors to determine trends in the data.

Since August 2002, DSG has been collecting clinical trial information in the U.S. using Palm m500 handhelds and Portsmith's device-specific modem cradles.

Source: Palm Boulevard

Ah.... if only I had a Palm PDA when I was a medical student. Shucks, there were hardly any computers back then - vaguely recall some TRS-80 or something very primitive back then :) Life would have been much easier, being able to carry all the lecture notes and what-not around, hand references literally in the Palm of your hand. I can imagine also taking lecture notes with a Palm and PPK keyboard.
Well, the Med Students at IMU have come up with their very own Med Student PDA webpage called the IMU PDA User Group. Great effort chaps!