What's New

August 30, 2002

 
PDxMD Coming Soon to Handhelds

The AAFP has teamed up with medical publisher Elsevier Science to offer Elsevier's PDxMD electronic clinical information system to AAFP members. PDxMD is a new evidence-based electronic primary care information system, specially designed for use by primary care physicians in practice. With full desktop features and handheld downloadable components, PDxMD offers comprehensive, continuously updated files on more than 450 medical conditions as well as information on more than 750 drugs and other therapies. An online demo of PDxHandheld is available on the PDxMD site. Access to the PDxMD system through the AAFP Web site will be available beginning in October 2002.
posted by Kent 9:05 PM | |

August 24, 2002

 
From Palm to Pocket PC...and Back Again

Dr. Aaron Green has posted a very nicely done web page detailing his personal experiences using both of the popular handheld platforms. "After some 8-10 months as a Pocket PC 'power user,' I'm back to the Palm OS and am much happier." Interesting reading for anyone who's been wondering if the grass is really greener on the other side of the fence.
posted by Kent 9:41 PM | |

August 21, 2002

 
New Medical Encyclopedia

Beiks and MedicineNet have released MedicineNet's Pocket Medical Encyclopedia for Pocket PC and Palm OS handhelds. Based on MedicineNet.com's doctor-produced online medical dictionary, the encyclopedia is a comprehensive consumer medical reference containing over 10,000 entries, and may also be useful to healthcare professionals and students. The encyclopedia contains the usual standard medical terms as well as pertinent scientific items, abbreviations, acronyms, jargon, institutions, projects, symptoms, syndromes, eponyms, and medical history. The Pocket Medical Encyclopedia is written entirely by U.S. board-certified physicians.
posted by Kent 7:23 PM | |

 
HIV Drug & Mutation Reference Guide

HIVresistanceWeb has published the HIV Drug & Mutation Reference Guide, which is now available for free download onto Palm OS devices. The PDA application is a handheld version of HIVresistanceWeb's Drug & Mutation Data Web pages, which provides at-a-glance and in-depth drug- and mutation-specific information, as well as extensive references and links to research databases.
posted by Kent 7:15 PM | |

 
Search the Ectopic Brain

In case you hadn't noticed by now, I've added a search engine to the site. You'll find a search box on the left-hand side of each page, just below the menu. Hopefully, this will make it easier to find things, especially old news items in the archives. Thanks to Vern Gillespie for the suggestion!
posted by Kent 6:52 PM | |

August 14, 2002

 
USPSTF Delivers Recommendations to Handhelds

Evidence-based recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force are now available for handheld devices as soon as the recommendations are issued, courtesy of a new partnership between the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and ePocrates. By distributing the recommendations to ePocrates members through the DocAlert messaging system, AHRQ hopes to get the recommendations out faster and to more clinicians. "This is an important step to bring evidence-based information to the point of care by getting these state-of-the-art scientific findings into the hands of health care professionals who are on the front line of improving the delivery of health care," AHRQ Acting Director Carolyn Clancy, M.D., said of the partnership. Click here for more information, including a link to a press release.
posted by Kent 6:22 PM | |

 
GRACE Risk Calculator

Andre Chen of StatCoder fame has developed a new risk calculator for in-hospital mortality based on the Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) model. It incorporates the following variables: age, CHF, heart rate, systolic BP, serum creatinine, cardiac arrest at admission, ST-segment deviation, and elevated cardiac enzymes. According to Dr. Chen, the article is being reviewed for publication in a major journal, and will be presented at a conference in Berlin next month. The authors plan to beam this application to conference participants during the presentation. This may be the first time that a PDA tool has actually been conceptualized and developed as an integral part of a significant clinical algorithm. Download the free beta version of GRACE ACS Risk here.
posted by Kent 12:08 PM | |

 
Buyers' Guide to PDAs

PC World magazine recently published a Buyers' Guide to PDAs covering both Palm OS and Pocket PC devices. Check it out if you're in the market for a new PDA.
posted by Kent 11:35 AM | |

 
CPTMeister

Dr. Andrew Schechtman has announced a new addition to the Meister series: CPTMeister is a coding reference based on the Physicians' Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes developed by the American Medical Association. Like the rest of the Meister series, it is an iSilo document composed of more than 2,000 pages interwoven with more than 10,000 hyperlinks to make locating the desired CPT codes fast and easy. CPTMeister not only includes all 7000+ CPT codes and their long procedural descriptions, it also includes lots of handy, additional, code-level information all accessible in the palm of your hand.
posted by Kent 8:41 AM | |

August 12, 2002

 
PDR from Skyscape

Those of you who are put off by the memory requirements of Franklin's Pocket PDR and aren't quite satisfied with the free MobilePDR should check out Skyscape's version. The concise drug entries are based on the same FDA-approved prescribing information in the PDR, and include indications, contraindications, warnings and precautions, adult and pediatric dosing, adverse reactions, drug-drug interactions (when present), therapeutic class, Black Box warnings (when present), how supplied, DEA class, pregnancy and nursing information, and manufacturer's name. Somehow, they've managed to cram all of that into only 1.7 MB of memory! What's more, Skyscape's patented smARTlink™ technology really comes alive with an integrated 5MCC™, iFacts™ drug analyzer and PDR solution. All can easily cross-index with each other as well as other Skyscape medical references to allow you to jump from diagnosis information to drug treatments instantly. For a limited time, Skyscape is offering an introductory discount of $15 off the $64.95 list price.
posted by Kent 8:04 PM | |

August 7, 2002

 
Fire/EMS Links

If you're a firefighter or paramedic, you might want to check out the extensive listing of fire/EMS-related links at www.firehouse.com.
posted by Kent 7:30 PM | |

 
Pendragon Forms

I just ran across this page on the Pendragon Forms site. It contains links to several healthcare-related case studies and articles, and might be of interest to anyone considering developing their own handheld application using Pendragon Forms. Pendragon Forms is a rapid application development (RAD) tool designed to enable virtually anyone, even non-programmers, to create applications that synchronize with Microsoft Access and ODBC databases.
posted by Kent 7:12 PM | |

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