Tom Cobin wrote to tell us about his website CME 4 PDA:

I’d like to make you aware of CME4PDA, a new product available for physicians to complete CME on their PDAs.

CME4PDA is different in important ways from other options for PDA-based CME. Each CME4PDA activity is a stand-alone item, not contained within a separate program. There is no subscription necessary, no special software required, no wireless signal needed. Each activity file is downloaded directly to the physician’s PDA during synchronization, and does not in any way disrupt the routine functioning of the user’s handheld unit.

After extensive research and planning, we believe CME4PDA will be of great interest to physicians. We expect to provide our first activities within the next three months, and are now accepting registrations from physicians who would like to be notified when these activities are available.

There have been a few questions and comments on the forum about medical PDA software that works with Windows Vista.

The current advice from Skyscape and Epocrates is below:

Skyscape:

Dear Chris,

If you are thinking of upgrading to Windows Vista> then go ahead. All of your favorite Skyscape resources are completely Vista compliant.

Many of you have known us as pioneers with a rich history of over 13 years of innovation in the mobile medical information market. Based on our philosophy of offering a broadest portfolio of resources on the widest array of platforms, we have been allowing you to tailor your experience to suit your needs. It is no surprise that we anticipated Windows Vista release and are ready with the compatible mobile and desktop resources. So you can have complete confidence using all your Skyscape resources and programs with Windows Vista, utilizing Palm Hotsync and Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center (the Vista replacement for ActiveSync).

We’re keeping our steadfast commitment to being the most up-to-the-minute, trusted mobile medical information provider and most technically advanced company with your best interests at heart. It’s just another reason to trust Skyscape - and enjoy using it!

If you need any details on how to handle the Vista upgrade for Skyscape resources or for any other matter, please visit, www.Skyscape.com/Support. And remember, our online chat is open for you 24×7x365.

Sincerely,
The Skyscape Team

Epocrates:

Dear Chris,

We think it’s important to let you know that many Palm® OS and Windows Mobile® (Pocket PC) OS software applications, including all Epocrates products, cannot at this time be installed or synced via computers with the new Windows Vista operating system.

We strongly recommend that if at all possible, you postpone installing Vista or upgrading to a new PC with Vista installed.

Since resolution of this problem depends upon software changes by both Palm and Microsoft, we regret that we cannot give you a firm date for a fix.

If you are already using Windows Vista, please review our FAQ for the latest recommendations from our customer support and engineering teams. Read FAQ »

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

The Epocrates Team

Press release from PEPID:

PEPID™ President announces partnering with American Academy of Emergency Medicine™

The Academy to provide review and contribution to the point of care leader in Emergency Medicine

Evanston, Illinois – January 31, 2007 – PEPID LLC, leading developer of mobile medical information resources for healthcare, today announced a corporate partnering agreement with the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM). The agreement is designed to leverage the expertise of both organizations to promote enhanced decision-support tools for specialists in emergency medicine. Under the terms of the agreement, the AAEM will provide a review of PEPID’s emergency medicine content. PEPID has agreed to support the Academy’s efforts to promote the use of mobile information resources on PDA’s and online, so emergency specialists can get the decision-support they need faster.

“I welcome The American Academy of Emergency Medicine to PEPID with great pride” said John Wagner, President of PEPID. “Our history of partnering with renowned professional medical associations in emergency care, primary care, hospital care, oncology, pharmaceutical and nursing allows us to continue to provide the absolute most current, relevant and peer reviewed point of care information to all medical professionals throughout the entire healthcare system. Our AAEM relationship will provide a virtual plethora of content from the most respected educators and care providers nationwide.”

“Patient overcrowding, nurse shortages, and difficulty in recruiting and retaining board-certified emergency physicians, especially in rural areas, are all reasons why emergency healthcare workers have to be increasingly productive,” commented Tom Scaletta, MD, President of AAEM. “Having instant access to vital knowledge resources, in the palm of their hand and in the Emergency Department will help Emergency Physicians better meet the demand for their services.”

PEPID delivers mobile access to fully-integrated medical, clinical, and pharmacological information, including evidence-based medicine; medical calculators, dosing calculators, drug interactions generator and illustrations. There are specialty-focused applications for all emergency physicians, primary care physicians, internal medicine specialists, nurses, pharmacists, residents, students, paramedics, and pharmacists.

In addition to products for individual caregivers, PEPID provides referential content for hospitals and healthcare systems. PEPID content will integrate into new and existing medical information systems for enhanced clinical decision-support for better patient care and services.

From PalmDoc:

Handheld Computer Smoking Intervention Tool (version 2.0) is designed for clinicians to assist with smoking cessation counseling at the point-of-care. This software was developed in partnership with the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Virginia in accordance with current PHS guidelines. This easy-to-use program can be used with Palm®, SmartPhone, and MicrosoftTM Pocket PC handheld computers.
Freeware.

The finalists for the 2007 22nd Annual SIIA Codie Awards have been announced:

Best Healthcare Management Solution (Vertical)
• AdvancedMD, AdvancedMD Software, Inc.
• CodeRyte.com, CodeRyte, Inc.
• MediCompass Pro, iMetrikus, Inc.
• Kronos for Healthcare, Kronos

Best Medical and Health Information Product
• The AHA Core Instructor Course, Enspire Learning
• Quicken Medical Expense Manager, Intuit, Inc.
• VisualDx, Logical Images
• NetCompetency, NetLearning – a division of Thomson Learning
• Skyscape MedAlert(tm), Skyscape
• Anatomy of Care, WILL Interactive, Inc.

Pete Woodward writes in the PDA and Smartphone Forum:

Has anybody out there used their PDA to assist in recording/communication of information to be used to pass on to other colleagues during a clinical handover? This could be either per-shift or when transfering patients to a different unit or department. I’m working on a project in the UK to investigate this area, see:

http://hcid.soi.city.ac.uk/research/Ghandi.html

If anybody has any useful information please email me.

Thanks in advance

Pete Woodward

Here’s the full project description:

GHandI is a 3 year, EPSRC-funded project due to commence in November 2006. The overall aim is to conduct a detailed investigation of clinical handover and its contribution to patient safety by developing and evaluating a generic theoretical model of handover and deriving detailed recommendations and prototypes for innovative handover support technologies.

The handover of responsibility from one individual or team to another has been shown to make a vital contribution to the safety and effectiveness of clinical work, yet current practice is highly variable: it varies from ward to ward and hospital to hospital. Handovers are often impromptu, informal and supported by ad hoc artefacts such as paper-based notes. While there have been small-scale studies of clinical handover in specific settings, including our earlier work on the ACE project, there is a lack of basic research. We will address this shortcoming with extensive field studies of handover in order to achieve a clear understanding of the ‘work’ that handover accomplishes; for example, there is evidence that handover contributes to patient safety by accomplishing work other than the immediate transfer of responsibility for patient care.

GHandI has 4 main objectives:

To develop a generic model of clinical handover from a socio-technical system perspective that will capture its many commonalities and variations.
To design and evaluate prototypes for innovative handover support technologies.
To investigate the role of simple codes and graphic languages in improving communication and reducing ambiguity in information resources used in clinical handover.
To investigate the nature of an effective handover and determine how this can be measured.
The modelling and design activities will be grounded in an understanding of the work obtained from the field studies in a range of very different settings, ranging from ambulance ‘retrieval’ services to inter-specialty transfers to shift handovers in paediatric intensive care units.

The outcomes of the research will be of direct benefit to the healthcare sector, both the field study settings and the NHS more generally, and will also be of relevance to other safety critical settings. The studies of the collaborative work of handover and the subsequent modelling activities will contribute to research in HCI and CSCW, as will the design of handover support technologies

Press release from Unbound Medicine:

“Today Unbound Medicine announced the release of The 5-Minute Pediatric Consult for PDA, the best-selling reference providing immediate, practical advice on problems seen in infants, children, and adolescents. More than 450 diseases are covered in the fast-access format that makes The 5-Minute Consult Series so popular among busy clinicians.

With Unbound Medicine’s award-winning design, you can choose from multiple indexes to instantly navigate to the information that best answers your clinical questions. Start with the basics by choosing a symptom, then move on to review differential diagnosis, treatment options, follow-up care and more.

Make sure you always have the latest information. Regular updates to The 5-Minute Pediatric Consult are delivered automatically when you synchronize your handheld.

For more information on The 5-Minute Pediatric Consult for PDA, please visit:

http://www.unboundmedicine.com/store/5-Minute-Pediatric-Consult“

UpToDate is a very popular evidence based medicine software product. It is a continuously updated (hence the name!) database of clinical questions that arise in daily practice.

You buy the product as a CD-ROM and install it to your PC. UpToDate has had a Pocket PC (Windows Mobile) version for some time now but released a version for Palm PDAs at the end of last year.

Palmdoc has posted a very useful review of the Palm product here.

The Doctor’s PDA and Smartphone Handbook is a hands-on guide to using a PDA or smartphone in a medical setting. The guide covers all areas of PDA use including organisation, medical reference software and using databases for managing patients.

This website hosts online video tutorials to accompany the book to help in getting your PDA set up for use in clinical practice. They are free to use so why not give them a try?

You can buy the book from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

PEPID has announced a new wireless installation services for their medical reference software for Palm handheld computers.

This system has been called Over-The-Air (OTA) installation as it allows users to install new applications and sychronise already installed apps with updates without needing to physically connect to a computer.

“We were one of the first developers in our space to embrace the capabilities of Palm® and Treo™ devices,” says John Wagner, President of PEPID LLC, “and we continue to upgrade our products to better serve the needs of our customers. PEPID users already benefit from our deep medical and nursing content, now delivered with even greater speed.”

http://www.pepid.com/