What's New

October 31, 2004

 
Free Computers Not Enough To Get Doctors Using Technology

Getting small physician’s offices to use computers and digital records is critical to improving health care and lowering its cost, but many remain reluctant. From InformationWeek:

When it comes to getting doctors to embrace computers, sometimes even free isn’t cheap enough, Leonard Schaeffer, chairman and CEO of WellPoint Health Networks Inc., has learned.

The health plan Wellpoint earlier this year provided $42 million worth of free PDAs or PCs to help entice doctors to adopt E-prescriptions or reduce paperwork by submitting claims electronically. Although WellPoint contracts with 25,000 doctors, only 19,000 physicians participated—one in four passed on the free gear. A big part of the problem is keeping the technology running, rather than the initial investment. Less than 25% of doctor offices “have any IT support at all,” says Schaeffer.

Click here to read the entire article.
posted by Kent 10:31 AM | |

October 29, 2004

 
PDAs Valuable in Fighting Infectious Diseases

Steven Burdette, MD, an Infectious Disease Fellow at Wright State University, recently published an article in the Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials entitled Killing Bugs at the Bedside: A prospective hospital survey of how frequently personal digital assistants provide expert recommendations in the treatment of infectious diseases (abstract). You can read the full text of the article in PDF format here.
posted by Kent 7:24 AM | |

 
More eMedicine Titles from Skyscape

Skyscape has released three new titles in its eMedicine series: eMedicine Ophthalmology, eMedicine Neurology, and eMedicine Pediatric Surgery & Pediatric Surgical Specialties. All are designed for use by practicing surgeons, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions.
posted by Kent 7:11 AM | |

October 28, 2004

 
Unbound Medicine and McGraw-Hill Expand PDA Alliance

McGraw-Hill Professional, a leading global information services provider, and Unbound Medicine, a leading provider of handheld, wireless, and Web solutions for healthcare, today announced the expansion of their strategic alliance in publishing for handheld and wireless devices.

Five new titles were released today under the expanded alliance:

CURRENT CONSULT Medicine 2005 is a new, integrated medical reference suite from the authors of the best-selling text, CURRENT Medical Diagnosis & Treatment. Providing succinct reviews of the diagnosis and treatment of 850+ disorders linked to more than 550 differential diagnoses, CURRENT CONSULT Medicine delivers practical answers more quickly and authoritatively than any other source.

CURRENT CONSULT Surgery integrates more than 360 surgical conditions, 100 differential diagnoses, and 21 cancer staging tables. Via Unbound’s mobile platform, answers are easily found using multiple indexes and extensive cross-links between topics.

Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests, 4e provides quick, evidence-based information to guide the selection and interpretation of more than 350 common diagnostic tests. Sections on laboratory tests, imaging studies, microbiology tests, therapeutic drug monitoring and tests in differential diagnosis provide vital information for daily patient care.

Essentials of Diagnosis and Treatment in Cardiology delivers concise information on the diagnosis and treatment of the 200 most important ambulatory and inpatient cardiac diseases. With its focus on the most important information, this program is perfect for medical students, residents, nurse practitioners, and primary care or family physicians.

Diagnosaurus, the free differential diagnosis application installed by more than 75,000 users, has proven its utility to a wide spectrum of students and clinicians. Diagnosaurus Surgery extends this already powerful differential diagnosis tool with surgical content. Clinicians can quickly find diagnostic assistance by entering either a disease or symptoms.
posted by Kent 10:50 PM | |

October 25, 2004

 
New Smart Phone Debuted by palmOne

palmOne has released a new version of its Treo smart phone. The Treo 650 features several enhancements to its predecessor, the Treo 600, which was released about a year ago.

The new version includes integrated Bluetooth technology, a removable battery, "nonvolatile" memory that maintains information when the phone's battery is dead, a newly designed QWERTY backlit keyboard, and support for e-mail access to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 using palmOne's VersaMail software. It also features an expansion card slot, which can support added memory or other data card-based applications, such as clinical reference software.

The Treo 650 smart phone is 4.4 inches long, weighs 6.3 ounces and runs on the Palm OS 5.4 operating system. It also features an Intel PXA270 312MHz processor, 23MB available storage, Infrared technology and a camera.

The Treo 650 smart phone runs on GSM/GRPS technology over a variety of mobile phone networks. Pricing will vary among mobile phone service carriers.

As clinical information system vendors continue to adapt their products for use on smart phones, more health care organizations are using the mobile hardware to offer improved patient data access for their physicians and nurses, experts say.

Source: Mobile Health Data
posted by Kent 5:55 PM | |

October 20, 2004

 
PDAs Find Home in Outreach Program

Clinicians in Unity Health System's Health Care for the Homeless program will use PDAs to access a proprietary electronic medical records system while treating patients in the field. The Rochester, N.Y.-based provider has hired the PDA School of Fairport, N.Y., to design and maintain its records system and train the 20 clinicians in the program to access it via PDAs.

The Health Care for the Homeless program offers care to homeless people, or those at risk for homelessness, from mobile medical units at about 10 sites across the Rochester, N.Y., area. Such care includes physical, mental and dental health assessment, treatment, and referrals. The program serves about 3,500 patients each year.

Unity Health System chose a PDA-based records system to help its homeless program providers better collect, access and store data while in the field. The program's clinicians will use Tungsten T3 PDAs from Milpitas, Calif.-based palmOne Inc. to collect patient data as well as store and print medical forms. The new records system also will be designed to enable the caregivers to electronically send a copy of the data to Unity Health System.

For more information, go to www.thepdaschool.com.

Source: Mobile Health Data
posted by Kent 10:22 PM | |

October 19, 2004

 
STAT GrowthCharts Updated

Andre Chen's STAT GrowthCharts has just been updated and renamed as STAT Growth-BP, now including automatic calculation of blood pressure tables from the recently-published guidelines:

The Fourth Report on the Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure in Children and Adolescents

Pediatric blood pressure percentiles depend on gender, age, and height percentiles.

As always, STAT GrowthCharts/Growth-BP remains a free clinical tool. The download page is:
http://www.statcoder.com/growthcharts.htm



posted by Kent 7:03 PM | |

October 18, 2004

 
GI Diseases

Skyscape's GIDiseases (Gastrointestinal & Liver Disease) 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.
posted by Kent 6:51 PM | |

 
CME Watch

I've used a HanDBase database to track my CME credits for years. Now, there's a new program available for those of you who'd rather not "roll your own" software. CME Watch is for physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists, and anyone who needs to attend and keep track of Continuing Medical Education time. The program automatically adds and summarizes total CME hours. Freeware!


posted by Kent 6:41 PM | |

October 17, 2004

 
palmOne Tungsten T5 Reviews

The new Tungsten T5 seems to be getting a generally favorable reception, with only a few detractors. Most of the negative comments come from people who are apparently under the mistaken impression that palmOne intended the T5 to be an upgrade from the T3. Although the model numbers and pricing might lead the casual observer to assume that the T5 should be everything the T3 is and more, it's pretty obvious to me that palmOne is aiming these devices at two different types of users. OK, the model number thing is confusing...maybe palmOne should've called it the Tungsten E2 instead. (I'll bet they're thinking the same thing right about now.) The pricing simply reflects where the two models are in their product life cycles; nothing more, nothing less.

IMHO, the T5 is an ideal PDA for medical professionals. Check out some of the reviews below (with a grain of salt, of course, since none of them are written by medical users). Hmm...maybe palmOne should send me one to review? ;-)

About.com

BargainPDA.com

Brighthand

The Gadgeteer

Mobiledia

PalmInfoCenter

PDA Buyer's Guide

PDA Review Spot

PocketFactory
posted by Kent 5:21 PM | |

 
New Skyscape Apps

emSports (eMedicine Sports Medicine), emENT (eMedicine Otolaryngology & Facial Plastic Surgery) and emDerm (eMedicine Dermatology) are completely current reference volumes consisting of comprehensive, but concise, disease-specific review articles. Each article undergoes 4 levels of physician peer-review and follows a consistent format. These volumes, authored and edited by hundreds of contributing physicians, are designed for use by practicing physicians, academicians and residents to provide rapid answers to clinical questions. These new versions combine eMedicine's patented collaborative authoring technology with Skyscape's intelligent mobile solution to create the ultimate handheld reference in their specialties.

PHRnDG05 (Prentice Hall Nurse’s Drug Guide 2005) provides safe, effective, current, and accurate drug administration information in a quickly accessible format. The fully revised 2005 edition includes the latest drugs approved by the FDA with key nursing implications are highlighted throughout. This is the only drug guide to include Prototype Drugs for easier learning.
posted by Kent 3:22 PM | |

 
HaemOncRules Updated

PalmDoc's HaemOncRules has been updated to version 1.5, and now includes modules on the FLIPI index for follicular NHL and Warfarin dosing. Haematology-Oncology Rules is a collection of algorithms which compute diagnostic criteria, prognosis and aid clinical decision making in the field of Hematology-Oncology. The program is freeware.
posted by Kent 3:19 PM | |

 
MD Visit

MD Visit is a Palm OS application designed by physicians for physicians to support coding and compliance at the point-of-care. Patient lists are organized and can be sorted various ways. You can quickly view patients assigned only to you or to your entire group. Cross covering has never been easier. With a press of a button, your patient data is securely synchronized to a central database, where common resources are shared with all your designated partners. Most physicians will be able to use all the features of MD Visit within a few minutes after installing the program. Best of all, MD Visit is free.
posted by Kent 3:15 PM | |

October 7, 2004

 
Penn. Equips Students With Essentials

The University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine, Philadelphia, will distribute a new suite of PDA reference tools from ePocrates 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.

Source: Mobile Health Data
posted by Kent 6:56 PM | |

October 6, 2004

 
palmOne Healthcare Webinar

palmOne will be conducting a "webinar" entitled The New Tungsten T5 Handheld in Healthcare on October 20, 2004 at 10:00 am. Click here to register.
posted by Kent 8:58 PM | |

 
Handhelds Reduce Medical Errors

The next time you see your doctor and he looks up a bit of information—drug interactions, diagnosis data, treatment options, etc.—on a PDA or smartphone, don't worry. Instead of indicating a lack of knowledge, the physician is using a sure-fire method to deliver better and safer treatment.

The National Academy of Science - Institute of Medicine reported last year that medical errors cost the healthcare system $2 billion annually, with more than $100 million in preventable drug errors alone. A recent 10-year roadmap for improving the nation's healthcare system by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services prescribes increased use of information technology, including handhelds, as among the most cost effective ways to improve patient care quality and reduce medical errors.

This finding is supported by a new survey from Skyscape, a company that specializes in mobilizing medical references. 50 percent of the 1,600 medical professional surveyed said PDA use reduces errors by more than 4 percent, with a whopping 92 percent of the doctors saying that PDAs help them improve efficiency. Among internists, 24 percent indicated it reduces their medical errors by over 10 percent, while an additional 41 percent achieved a lesser, but still impressive, 6 percent reduction.

In addition, the use of multiple medical references on one PDA is widespread, with over 78 percent of respondents having at least three medical references on their mobile device. Forty-six percent of internists have five or more references and 10 percent indicated they have 10 or more references on their PDA.

Skyscape VP of Marketing RJ Mathew noted, "It is essential that these references all work together seamlessly and be easy to use." Of course, the company offers a technology, smARTlink, to do just that with its handheld references.

Close to 90 percent of doctors leverage mobile drug references more than any other type. 38 percent of respondents indicated that they also use PDAs for drug interaction checks, with cardiologists and internists the most likely to use it for that purpose.

Source: PDAStreet
posted by Kent 8:03 PM | |

October 5, 2004

 
RxCalc (Formerly DoseCalcPlus) Updated

Jeremy Adler's RxCalc (formerly DoseCalcPlus) is a standalone program for calculating pediatric medication doses.

The program is available in left- and right-handed versions, and allows you to easily calculate doses for both oral (PO) and intravenous (IV) medications. It includes medication lists for convenient dose reference, and lets you look up drugs using the brand or generic names. The calculator lets you adjust a dose up or down to a conveniently rounded-off dose, calculate the dispense volume for PO meds, convert between weight units (kg, lb and oz, stone), and more.

Version 4.0 includes a number of new features and bug fixes, including:

• Resizable screen for Sony Clié / Tungsten|T3 [Ed: And presumably the new T5]
• Collapsible keyboard
• High resolution fonts
• Small fonts with color/bold highlighting of erroneous values
• Graffiti Shortcuts
• Optional unit change warning/clear screen
• Formatted information screens
• Fixed error in IV calculation where dose is calculated - µg/kg/min was correct, but µg/kg/hr was wrong
• Grayscale icons no longer supported in Palm OS 4.0
• Single-dose drugs now display as mg/dose, etc.

posted by Kent 8:00 AM | |

October 4, 2004

 
Tungsten T5 Announced

palmOne today introduced the Tungsten T5 handheld with new high-capacity flash memory. The Tungsten T5 includes 256MB of total memory - 160MB of flash memory and 55MB for applications. palmOne says that the Tungsten T5's flash memory protects information even if the device loses its charge, and doubles as a portable flash memory drive as well (it's basically a built-in memory card). There's also an SD/MMC slot available, of course. Using "Drive Mode", the flash memory can be accessed directly when your handheld is plugged into your computer's USB port. The new handheld also features a 320x480 color screen with landscape mode, Bluetooth, an Intel 416MHz XScale processor, and a slim design reminiscent of the Tungsten E. The Tungsten T5 is expected to ship November 3rd, and will retail for $400.

Addendum: This article in Investor's Business Daily seems to suggest that palmOne designed the T5 with healthcare providers in mind. (Thanks to PalmDoc for the link.)
posted by Kent 7:05 AM | |

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