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MedRules Rulez!
PalmGear Announces Top 10 Applications for Palm-Connected Handhelds for July

The top 10 applications on the PalmGear site in July were:

* Aerodrome Software’s AeroPlayer, an enhancement that turns a Tungsten T,
Tungsten C or Zire 71 into a portable MP3 audio player.
* Datoru Drosibas Tehnologijas’ FlyZip XR, a compressing and decompressing
utility that doubles the amount of information stored on Palm OS
handhelds without modifying the hardware.
* ZZTECH’s ZLauncher, a system management program integrating the system
supervisor, application/database manager and expansion card manager.
* Ardiri’s Lemmings, a fun free game for the Palm, implemented from the
classic game originally created by Psygnosis.
* Ants Technologies’ DataKeeper, a database utility that maintains
personal information such as passwords, credit cards, bank information,
birthdays, flights, hotels and URLs in a single location.
* PocketSensei’s SilverScreen, a tool that customizes your Palm OS
interface with a library of various stylish themes.
* Kent Willyard’s MedRules, a medical application that features clinical
prediction rules.
* Ants Technologies’ DateBook on Clock, brings users address book, date
book, to do list, mail, etc. onto one easy to read interface.
* Arcona Magi’s Medieval Heroes, a free historical strategy game.
* PDA 3Dware’s 3D Blockout, the only three-dimensional falling blocks game
for the Palm.

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Medical Abbreviations

I am sure many a medical or nursing student have emerged from wards bewildered by case note entries such as:

Pt 44 yr old Ind M c/o SOB 3 mths, LOA and LOW. BNO for 4 days. PHI of HBP, NIDDM . o/e T 38 PERL EENT NAD, CVS DRNM, Abd L°S°K°

Doctors are guilty of such horrible indecipherable abbreviations (as if the writing is not bad enough!!).

I came across 2 freebies in Palmgear.com which may be useful to those struggling to cope with this issue.

Medical Abbreviations by Krystof J. Neumann is one.
Application Description:Medical Abbreviations is a FREE, very easy to use, searchable database that currently includes over 2000 common and not-so-common medical abbreviations from AA to ZPP, and from HEENT to BRBPR, that was compiled with the hope of reducing some of the confusion that results from the use abbreviations in medical charting.

For some reason I could not run this program on my T|T. Perhaps it is not OS 5 compatible. I shall try it a bit later on my m515 and post the results here. Anyway no harm trying it as it may work for you.

Medical Abbreviations 3.0 is an iSilo document by Kiup Alex Kim . This has over 3000 abbreviations. The released version is free but the author (a medical student) can send you updated versions if you wish, for a nominal fee

There are other Payware Medical Abbreviations on Palmgear, some purporting to contain over 10,000 listings (goodness, are there that many).
I’ll bet none have “UFEME” – can you guess what this obscure abbreviation stands for – it’s used I think only in my part of the world 😉

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Moses Cone Health System

“The doctors, on average, save anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes per day by using this solution in their rounds. The time saved gets pretty staggering when you talk about how many people we have per hospital.”

According to John Jenkins, CIO at Moses Cone, “The challenges that we have are that the physicians need a convenient way to collect information about the patients they are caring for. We have clinical systems in place, but they require going to a computer, sitting down, and getting the information; then, either transposing it to a piece of paper or remembering what they’ve seen to go deal with their patient. It was inconvenient and it was fairly time-consuming. What we were looking for was a solution that would be easy for the physician to carry around and could present the clinical data that they needed for their patient care one that they could get to very easily and quickly. MercuryMD and the Palm handheld provide that solution for us.”

How did they use MercuryMD’s MData to perform all this wizardry?

“Several infrared beaming stations are located around the hospital buildings. Pointing the Palm handheld at one of the beaming stations allows clinicians to download patient data, treatment plans, lab results, and other patient information. The doctors, on average, save anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes each day. Pharmacists, who previously had to write or print information about each patient every morning, can also access patient records and prescriptions via Palm handhelds. The Palm handheld solution results in less paperwork and saves each pharmacist an hour or more a day”

Read the full Palm article here on how Moses Cone Health Systems did it.

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Jim’s new Palm

Jim Thompson, another Palm toting emergency medico has upgraded to the T|T2. His My Tungsten T2 page details his thoughts on his new Palm. It apparently was a necessity as Jim’s NR70 died. As for me my T|T is still going strong and the T|T2 is too little an improvement to justify an upgrade. I am holding out for the T|T3 or possibly trhe rumoured T|C2 (with WiFi AND Bluetooth). But really 320×480 would be the bigger lure and I do need more Ram. Jim hasn’t discovered the joys of Bluetooth yet 😉 He says “I have never felt compelled to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars upgrading handhelds and cellphones to surf the Internet slowly on a small screen. “. Jim, Jim. Not just the surfing. Most of my Bluetooth activity involves sending and collecting SMSs from my Bluetooth capable phone (the cheap, battery efficient lightweight Ericsson T39) which remains in my pocket. Dialing from the T|T via Bluetooth to the phone and then picking up the call on the Bluetooth HBH-30 headset is the ultimate in geekiness.
I am reminded in this tropical part of the world, there’s another famous Jim Thompson. Same moniker but quite a different character – his disappearance is still a mystery today. He was last seen in Cameron Highlands, a highland resort in my home country. But I digress…….

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BluefishRx Prescription Writer

BlueFish Wireless Prescription writer sounds like a very good idea. I was fascinated that they have incorporated Biometric Signature Verification. I wonder how the Palm will standup to this in real life. Sending the order wirelessly to the pharmacy sounds real cool too.

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DateToolz 1.0

DateToolz, written by yours truly has been released as freeware on Palmgear (and hopefully soon on Freewarepalm.com). For me, I just wanted a tool which I could easily use to schedule appointments for patients. I use Agendus every day but one thing it lacks is an easy way to say schedule an appointment 15 weeks or 100 days in advance. Imagine trying to pick out the date on the popup Date picker. Now with McPhling, I can swicth to DateToolz easily, select the date, hit the Schedule It button and paste the patient’s Name. Then one more Tap adds the appointment complete with the [brackets] which links the appointment to the contact Agendus-style.

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HaemOncRules in Palmgear

Haemonc Rules appears in Palmgear at last. Had alot of difficulty submitting the software as there seemd to be a bug in Palmgear’s software submission mechanism. Even their Search engine seems to be buggy. Keying in Haemoncrules in the search gives rise to absolutely nothing. Something’s not quite right hear Palmgear people……
HaemoncRules is a collection of algorithms for computing diagnostic criteria, prognosis and clinical decision making in Haematology-Oncology. The current version 1.0 has 14 modules. I have actually done three more so will be updating to version 1.1 in a week or two.

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Got a headache?

MemoWare : Headache Diary keeps track of your headaches in HanDbase and MobileDB formats. Keeping track of your symptoms particularly with chronic disorders is a good idea so you can present your information accurately to your physician.

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My Dead Palm

Palmdoc’s Palm-Pilot- Professional Resting Place chronicles the passing of my first Palm PDA. This thing replaced all the sheets of note paper and little booklets I used to carry around in the wards in my bulging Labcoat pockets. Since then, I have never looked back and gone on to a IIIx, m505, m515 and now a Tungsten T. All were in working condition until the Pilot Professional finally died this year. RIP.

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DateToolz

I am currently on holiday, away from the noise and pollution of the city. The air is nice and clean up north here. But sadly, there is no broadband and I only have a very very slow dial-up which is flaky at best. What to do with all the spare time? More NSBasic programming of course 🙂
One of the things I find when I use Agendus to schedule appointments is the lack of an easy way to schedule the item x weeks/days ahead of the current date (one has to manually count the days/weeks on the Popupdate picker). What I wanted is a system to work out the new date and then automatically put in a new Datebook entry for that date. Thus Datecalc came into fruition. I also put in a checkbox so that the patient’s names are enclosed in brackets simulating Agendus’ link to the contact. A bit clunky but it works. I thought I’d also put in other useful (to me anyway) Date calculation features. Agecalc will work out the days/weeks/months/years elapsed from the “birthdate” which could be anything you want, e.g. date of transplant. I also threw in a pregnancy EDD/gestation calculator, Pregcalc. I know, I know some of these are available in various freeware Palm software out there but I cobbled these together as they are tools which I would be using and hopefully someone out there will find this useful as well. Watch out for DateToolz in Freewarepalm.com (and Palmgear if they can get their act together)