Labcoat Library

USBMIS Sanford Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy

2006-02-28T11:21:00.000-08:00

Price: $ 27.50

1 year term: Yes

Required Memory: 3 MB

Ease of use: Excellent

Information quality: Excellent

Design quality: Excellent

Who it's best for: Physicians, nurses and others who need information about antimicrobial prescribing and delivery in a hurry.

General Comments:
USBMIS’ Sanford Guide is easier to use than the paper version (no fine print, better sorting of information), uses journal citations so that you know if your evidence is current or not, and unlike most PDA drug software, actually uses smooth typefaces. This is not a general reference, and is most helpful when choosing antibiotics to treat bacterial and viral infections.

Full Review

Unbound's Davis Drug Guide Review

2006-02-13T23:38:00.000-08:00

Unbound: Davis’ Drug Guide

Price: $49.95

1 year term: Yes

Required Memory: 4 MB

Ease of use: Excellent

Information quality: Mediocre

Design quality: Excellent

Who it's best for: Nurses, Paramedics, and others who need more information about practical considerations of medicine delivery.

General Comments: The well-loved Davis Drug Guide series, published annually for Nurses, has been refashioned by many PDA software makers. The version by Unbound was the only one to win the Handango "Best (Healthcare) Industry Application" in 2005. It is a well-researched product that is most helpful for those who need to access information quickly at the patient's bedside, but it is only updated quarterly and lacks a separate tool for drug interactions, as with Epocrates or Lexi-Comp.

Full Review

Lexi-Comp Review

2005-12-21T10:47:00.000-08:00

Price: $225 for Lexi-Complete ($285 after March 1, 2006). $75 for Lexi-Drugs only, without herbs, drug interaction software, etc.

1 year term: Yes

Required Memory: 14 MB on main memory, 40 MB on card

Ease of use: mediocre (see below)

Information quality: excellent (see below)

Design quality: inferior (see below)

Who it's best for: pharmacy residents, researchers, clinicians who have copious spare time at the bedside to look up information

General Comments: Lexi-Drug, a very thorough drug reference text, and Lexi-Comp, a series of drug references that includes Lexi-Drug, infuse large volumes of text into entries about a given drug, with a "jump" feature to zip from one portion of text to the other. The text provides excellent information, but is difficult to use at the bedside due to its lack of windows and poor synthesis of the information it includes.

Full Review

Buying medical software for a new PDA?

2005-12-20T21:34:00.001-08:00

Why are Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) helpful for physicians, nurses, dentists, and paramedics?

Although some users of handheld devices (PDAs, cell phones, and iPods) use PDAs for multimedia, games, or business, many medical professionals use them as reference libraries. As a nursing student, it has been very helpful to have a dictionary, medical reference, lab reference, and medical encyclopedia for day-to-day clinical use. Many practitioners use the free program Epocrates, which organizes current updates of medications, including action, indications, contraindications, side effects, cost, and dose. Another free application (which is at least as helpful and clinically authoritative) is MerckMedicus. It includes a lab test manual, the Merck Manual (an encyclopedia of many diseases), and abstracts of as many medical and nursing journals as you care to follow, which is useful if you're trying to focus on a particular discipline within medicine. Drawbacks? Epocrates lacks subtantial information about pharmacokinetics and IV drug compatibility, and MerckMedicus lacks many common lab tests and radiology exams -- which means that healthcare providers must supplement these books or purchase other software.

I also download PDF files of journal articles from the internet (medical reference libraries such as OVID, Medline, and CINAHL) onto a PC or Mac desktop, then transfer them to my PDA using a free, customized version of Adobe Acrobat.

Many crummy free medical programs abound, but I found two that were actually useful: a website from which you can download free, current CDC shot schedules, and a website that offers a free Geriatrics textbook. (The last two are also nice to look at.)

Palm vs Microsoft on PDAs

There are two basic types of operating system platforms: Palm and Microsoft. Confusingly, Palm makes its own hardware and its own software platform (and the Microsoft platform on the Treo 700). The Palm website has a helpful comparison chart of its devices, found here. For Microsoft PC platforms, there are literally dozens of manufacturers. A company that delivers excellent value (for what you pay) is Dell, which has a comparison chart for their products here.

If you are looking for the best basic gadget without the fancy doo-dads, you have to comparison shop. If you simply want a no-frills PDA with a date planner, calendar and a couple of medical programs (you will probably want at least 30 MB of memory), consider buying a low-end device, but make sure that it has an SD memory card slot, which allows you to buy extra memory (see "hidden costs" below). A helpful website to compare all devices is bargainpda.com, which seems fair, honest, and uses a search engine of multiple sites to find low prices.

Hidden Costs, SD cards, and Cases

Ah, the hidden costs: for extra memory on a SD memory card, you're looking at $35-$100 for 1 GB of memory (only necessary if you plan to store two dozen references, or lots of MP3 files, or long videos of your dog or niece, or for some games). Other hidden costs: a metal or leather case can run from $25-100, a keyboard for typing papers or patient evaluations is $60, and most medical programs cost $50 (see below).

Speaking of cases, they are a must for protecting fragile hardware. In my experience, aluminum cases hold up best in patient care environments, partly because they are easier to clean. Palm, Dell, HP and other manufacturers sell tailor-made cases at their respective websites. Fancy leather ones are made by Piel Frama, Vaja, and Covertec.

Here's an example of how these applications have been useful to me in clinical practice as a student:

With the PDA's word program (DocsToGo, free with Palm PDAs; MS Word is free with PC platforms), I can write my reports about patients at the bedside, then upload ("sync") and edit them on my computer at home. This way I have the patient's information while I'm at the hospital, and most of the reports can be finished at the same time that I collect information. This process definitely beats writing a patient's information down once on scrap paper and typing it again later, and was worth the price of the PDA. The copy/paste function also allows me to copy from all of my reference manuals directly into my patient reports. The collapsible keyboard that I use also speeds up the whole process considerably and was about $60; I use it during classes, and now I'm mostly paperless. (I can make the information HIPAA compliant by eliminating personal identifiers about a patient before leaving a clinical area.)