Archive for the ‘Mobile Sites’ Category

Unbound Medline

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

There are many PDA applications and portals that help us search the medline right from our devices [check this Pda4peds category for a list of these]. But, the Unbound Medline, is a special way of searching the Medline as it is packed with features that are missing from the others.

Here’s how it looked on the Windows Mobile screen;

And here’s how it looks on the iPod Touch;

Comparing the above two screens it’s obvious how the iPhone platform supersedes, with wonderful colors and a large screen which translates to more content per look and with all the “wow factor” that iPhone’s Touch technology adds to the experience.

Just type www.unboundmedicine.com/medline on your device and you will be taken to this free service.

This mobile website is a smart website in that it can recognize whether you are visiting it through your iPhone, iPod Touch Safari or through some other mobile devices so that it changes its skin to fit the platform.

It can also be visited by the desktop also. But why should we visit a third party website when the actual PubMed website is there and fully functional. However, it is definitely helpful when we want to look up the Medline through our mobile device.

This is not new to Unbound Medicine as they were the pioneers in introducing a Medline search function into their popular Mobile Merck Medicus software.

The new features here included the following:

  • A special disease section and special drug look up category and even a medical news filter.
  • Advanced search functionality with optional emphasis and level of evidence.
  • The abstract is linked to the original journal website and the link can be shared with a friend via send email function.

This is, without doubt, the place where we want to be when it comes to looking up the medline on our devices.

Check the Best Medline search application to see this app’s ranking.

You can also get the Unbound Medline as search option when you download our LinkedPeds Toolbar.

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Posted in All, Free, Journals and Medline Search, Mobile Sites, iPhone | 2 Comments »

The Pediatric Care Online (Part 2 0f 2)

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Continued from Part 1..

The Pediatric Care Online looks wonderful on the large iPhone screen as shown below:

Unbound Medicine unlike Skyscape did not make a special iPhone website but rather for all their products they made universal wireless websites that can be accessed by any device whether Palm, iPhone, or Windows Mobile. This time the website really fits the iPhone screen and the Pediatric Care Online looks and feels just incredible on iPhone. For a higher resolution slide show and further details visit PCO on iPhone pda4peds review page.

Of note here is that the wireless version [unlike the PDA version] does not miss any of the features of the Pediatric Care Online including all of those listed in the previous post. In addition the search box is available throughout all pages and will look up information across all sections.

To see how the website looks on the Windows Mobile screen see this pda4peds review or Video demonstration page.

Further more the wireless version cross linking is better than the native app as it is linked to all of the resources and it has more extensive external linking to online resources.

Speaking of external links this is the first PDA application where we have references live linked to PubMed articles [Even UpToDate they list the references only and provides no links to PubMed URLs] and this is a great feature of an evidence based resource.

The Visual Library [Wireless and Web only] is a great atlas of pediatrics where we have rashes, syndromes, tables, illustrations, CTs, X rays, and other fantastic images. Other PDA pediatric databses does not provide such a rich library of images [except perhaps UpToDate].

Bottom line: The Pediatric Care Online is a great evidence based and trustworthy mobile pediatric reference that can be extremely useful in our daily practice and it may shape the future of pediatric references forever, However it still needs considerable improvements and hopefully will see these enhancements added gradually in the near future.

If you like it enough you can vote for PCO as a Best All-in-one Pediatric PDA application and also as a Best Evidence Based Reference.

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Posted in All, All-in-one Applications, Mobile Sites, iPhone | 7 Comments »

Pepid Mobile on iPhone

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

Pepid; a PDA tool well known among ER doctors which contains loads of ER information in the form of topics, figures, calculators, drug information, laboratory information, drug interactions and many others.

This wonderful app has been made available as a wireless website which can be accessed by any PDA or phone that has browsing capability.

Just point your iPhone’s Safari or your Pocket PC’s IE Mobile to http://mobile.pepid.com and you will be there.

Their suites whether the ED or the PCP both have Pediatrics Module with specific pediatric information and dosages and calculators.

The slide show below demonstrates some screenshots of Pepid Mobile as accessed by iPod Touch.

Of course this will be the same for the iPhone via Wifi or 3G.

The wireless version does not miss anything from the native application that we used to play on our Palm and Windows Mobile devices. But this time we can also have it on the iPhone or iTouch.

The Bad News:

First: Unlike Unbound Medicine they don’t offer wireless subscription when you subscribe for the native application, and so we have to purchase both the wireless and the built-in application for more than $300 per year!

Second: Although the website is user friendly but they did not create an iPhone-friendly website and so they did not redesign it to be compatible with the easy finger touch user interface and consequently buttons and links are still quite difficult to tap even on a wide iPod or iPhone screen.

The Good News:

Pepid promised to create a native application for the iPhone so let’s wait and see.. [ to understand the differences between native and online applications read this guide].

[Update 3-17-2009] PEPID native app is now available, check this Pda4peds review.

Here’s a list of pediatric mobile [wireless] websites as reviewed by pda4peds. You may also vote for your favorite one in the best pediatric mobile website poll.

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Posted in All, Mobile Sites, Pediatric Emergency, iPhone | 13 Comments »

The Pros and Cons of ARUPconsult “Physicians Lab & Test Guide”

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

The famous ARUP laboratories made their database lab reference available for us, The ARUPconsult.

The ARUPconsult “physicians lab and test guide” is available in all sorts of formats that we can think of; online access, a PDA version, as an AvantGo channel, and also as a mobile site, this is what we are talking about other developers should think seriously to do the same if they want their software to be used / purchased by as many as possible.

The fun part is that all these platforms are just free… yes free. You don’t need even to register with them!

OK now let’s start with the Pros of this laboratory guide

1)Free download 2)Multiple platforms as mentioned above 3)Easy and clean interface 4)Pages load quickly 5)Appropriately cross linked 6)Beautiful disease centered theme 7)Enough detailed clinical background for each test  8th)Standard reference from the national guideline clearinghouse 9)frequent updates “6 times a year”

But there are a number of Cons of the ARUPconsult program

1)Not pediatric specific and age specific references of normal values are missing 2)No panels like CBC, Urine, or others 3)Algorithms do not work (I tried the mobile site and the AvantGo channel) the list is there but they are dead links 4)No information about preparation and patient instructions 5)Several lab tests are missing such as C reactive protein and procalcitonin! 6)I tried to download the PDA version from their web page which mentions that we have to register BUT there is no registration link! If you find that link please comment on this post.

In a netshell, this piece of software is very useful at the bedside although there are many enhancements needed which is hopefully are going to be there as the reference is updated relatively frequently.

If you wish to read more detailed review check out these pda4peds web pages

ARUPconsult Mobile Site      Review    AAG     Video Demo

ARUPconsult AvantGo Channel       Review     AAG      Video Demo

Finally if you like this program please vote for it in our Best Pediatric Programs page and choose either the Free category or the Labs and Tests category to vote. NB- Voting for the best pediatric mobile site is not yet available.

Posted in All, Free, Labs & Tests, Mobile Sites | No Comments »

The Lancet on our PDA!

Friday, July 20th, 2007

The Lancet founded in 1823 and one of the most famous and respectable medical journals is currently available on our PDA.

Read this Pda4peds Review for further details.

Since it was acquired by Elsevier in 1991 one should expect that it’s mobile content would be available through the Elsevier’s PDA manager “Pocket Consult” but then the journal was found to offer their PDA content through Round Point.

Round point provides a special subscription manager that we should install on the PDA in order to retrieve updated contents when we synchronize.

But there is much easier way to go, just serve the journal on the PDA browser when connected let it be WiFi, GPRS, WAP or whatever. The journal can be easily flipped through and pages upload fairly quickly. No need for Round Point subscription manager which is by the way it only provides “The Lancet” as medical journal, others are mostly UK business and financial news.

Now the great news is ” there is a six months free trial currently offered” click here to subscribe for full text Lancet right on your handheld and absolutley free!

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Posted in All, Journals and Medline Search, Mobile Sites, News | No Comments »