With the release of the long-awaited Sanford Guide, Palm OS users now have three (count 'em!) well-done commercial infectious disease references to choose from. The Sanford Guide is the only one of the bunch that you have to pay for, and Sanford is hoping that user familiarity and the strength of their reputation will convince folks to ante up $25 (more than three times the cost of the paper book, unless you usually get it free from a drug rep like most of us do). Unfortunately, there's no trial version available, but they have provided several screen shots on their Web site that give you a flavor for how the program works. Early feedback has been mixed, but it appears that lots of folks enjoy having this resource available on their Palm devices, even though the small screen prevents many of the paper Sanford Guide's tables from being reproduced effectively in electronic form. I haven't tried it myself yet, as I'm still happy with the freeware alternatives, namely ePocrates qID, which integrates nicely with their popular companion drug reference ePocrates qRX, and The Johns Hopkins Antibiotic Guide. Even if you can't quite bring yourself to trust the data in ePocrates qID (although it seems accurate enough as far as I can tell), it's hard to argue with an academic powerhouse like Hopkins. Since these two apps are free, try them out first to see if you like them. If not, maybe the Sanford Guide will be worth the cost. The real test will be to see which of these programs does a better job of keeping up with changes in therapeutic recommendations over time. Paper guides have always been slightly obsolete even when they're brand new, but electronic references, particularly if they offer some form of auto-update like ePocrates qRx (unfortunately, qID doesn't have this capability yet) have the potential to outperform paper-based references in this critical area.
posted by Kent 9:20 AM |
|
![[RSS 0.92 feed]](http://medicalpda.net/img/xml.gif)
