AAP « Pediatric PDA Blog

Posts Tagged ‘AAP’

Nelson Pocket Book of Pediatric Antimicrobial Therapy

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

The new 2008-2009 edition of the famous little yellow pocket book is out for the PDA and iPhone from Skyscape. Written by the chief editor of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal and in collaboration with the AAP’s Red Book Committee this reference is certainly an authority when it comes to antibiotics in clinical and community based pediatrics.

See this iPhone video review:

See this Windows Mobile video review:

Most of the contents are presented in table format and unfortunately the Skyscape interface [as well as most other developers] does not really fit those tables into the small PDA screen and so we’d have to scroll side to side to see the whole table which makes navigation rather unpleasant. In addition, the lack of landscape mode of Skyscape titles [as of the time of writing this post] further compounds this issue.

It has everything related to infectious disease pharmacotherapy with drug dosages even in detailed circumstances such as the neonatal patient. For each clinical syndrome there is a list of recommended antibiotics sometimes down to the third line of choice. However, the reverse is not true, we don’t get a list of indications against each antimicrobial. This is something we wish to see in future versions.

References and grading of evidence are not so extensively quoted against each recommendation in the Nelson Pocket Book and this will be accounted for in the future editions as mentioned in the newly published website www.nelsonspocketbook.com.

Some Useful Links

Purchase and download directly from Skyscape website [$25].
Purchase the original print edition from Amazon [$25].
Have your say in the Best Antibiotic App Poll.

Tags: AAP, Nelson Pocket Book, Skyscape
Posted in All, Infectious Diseases, News | 3 Comments »

The new Red Book 2009

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

The American Academy of Pediatrics has just released the latest 28th edition of the most trusted infectious disease reference, The Red Book 2009.

Concomitantly, it was released from Unbound Medicine for the mobile platforms.

For iPhone/iPod Touch version play this video;

And this time with landscape support;

For the Windows Mobile version play this video;

Unbound Medicine’s Red Book is also compatible with all other platforms including Palm (but not Palm Pre), Blackberry, and even Android.

The AAP book store is offering the same Unbound Medicine Red Book and interestingly at a higher price for non-members!

Skyscape’s and other developers versions will be available in the near future as per the AAP.

Although not as rich as the AAP’s Red Book online, the UM’s web version of the Red Book is offered for free when we subscribe to any of the mobile platforms and so we can access it offline on the handheld and also online on the desktop and wirelessly.

The Red Book is undoubtedly a must-have reference for any pediatrician and we should all upgrade to this latest version, by the way UM provide free upgrade if you’ve been a valid subscriber of the previous version.

It can better

UM’s Red Book is great but still there’s room for improvements;

Wish to see images included.
Wish to see search history.
More linking to external resources.
A “what’s new” section would be great.

Also some problems were found in this first iPhone version;

There’s a bug in which the home page does not tilt to landscape only after switching to landscape from within the contents.

Some links are broken and others are dead as seen here;

However, since this is the first release we expect to see fixes in the near future.

Some useful links

Check the latest results of the Best Infectious Disease Apps Poll.
Download the UM’s Red book for $99.95 directly from Unbound Medicine here.
The print edition and an online access package can also be purchased for $275 from Amazon here.

Tags: AAP, Red Book, Unbound Medicine
Posted in All, Infectious Diseases, News, References & ebooks, iPhone | 6 Comments »

Pediatric Clinical Practice Guidelines & Policies on the PDA

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Certainly, it’s a great idea to have all those evidence based policies and guidelines endorsed by the APP in the palm of hands!

Pediatric Clinical Practice Guidelines

The AAP’s compilation of the latest guidelines and policies is available in the form of Mobipocket document.

The PDA version of the Pediatric Clinical Practice Guidelines and Policies “9th edition” offers more than just the policies and statements, it includes some other very useful features. Turn your audio on and see the following video for more details.

The addition of a bilirubin assessment tool, the vaccines scheduling, patient guidance, and some ICD codes makes this great evidence-based PDA reference a repository of the all tools that a pediatrician may need in practice.

However, as mentioned in the video above, the app need to be available in other medical readers that we are all familiar with such as Skyscape or Unbound Medicine.

For $55 [members] and $60 [non-members] the stand alone PDA version only it can be downloaded from the AAP’s Book store

We can also buy $100 the book+CD Rom+PDA version from Amazon, or $105 [members] -$90 [non-members] directly from AAP’s Bookstore.

Tags: AAP, Guidelines, Mobipocket
Posted in All, All-in-one Applications, Coding & Billing, Evidence Based Pediatrics, Vaccines | 6 Comments »

Medical Wizards, No more Red Book!

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

The Red Book Medical Wizards

The AAP’s Red Book is one of the most trusted infectious disease references ever available on the PDA. It is provided from the AAP directly in a mobipocket format and from Skyscape and also from Unbound Medicine.

They all deliver it in a similar price range $100-110. Read this post for a comparison of the three.

What was interesting is that Medical Wizards used to offer this title for less than half the price at $50! However, only for the Palm platform and even cannot be installed onto Windows Mobile via Style Tap because it’s .exe and not .prc file.

That Medical Wizards page looked really strange as the description was a mere copy and paste of that pdaMD offer where they delivered the Red Book and Epocrates Rx in one device bundle. So they did not even bother to write their own short description of the Red Book.

However, after I contacted both the AAP and Medical Wizards, that page was removed and the Red Book is no longer offered! It seems that was a big mistake from Medical Wizards.

I just wonder for those who purchased the Medical Wizards version of the Red Book, do they still have it? Is it legal!

UPDATE: We received a support reply from Medical Wizards saying that the file can still be downloaded from this link, however, that’s a free trial download we don’t know how to purchase the product. They also said that the product page is to be upgraded and to be published soon! Probably, they’ll revise the price!

Waiting for your comments…

Tags: AAP, Medical Wizards, Red Book
Posted in All, News, Opinions | 2 Comments »

The Pediatric Care Online (Part 1 of 2)

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

We have been waiting for a such a complete and integrated PDA resource from the AAP for a while, and finally they made it and it’e here The Pediatric Care Online [PCO].

As the name implies this is designed to reside online which means frequent updates, interactive contents, universal platform, access anywhere, and an electronically delivered digital resource that matches the transformation into the IT era of today’s medicine and pediatrics.

Sponsored by Mead Johnson and is available for AAP members at a rate of $250 and for non members for $290 yearly subscription a price that may seem to be on the expensive side but when we consider the number of resources it includes the price might be reasonable.

Fortunately a free trial from Mead Johnson check this link is available:

Three months for pediatricians
One year for pediatric residents

PCO encompasses a number of excellent resources and references that are all evidence based and authenticated content right from the governor of our practice the American Academy of Pediatrics.

As it is the most common and arguably the most important PDA function; it included a pediatric drug look up and this time from the highly trusted Lexi database [It is also the drug reference of UpTodate]. The drug guide is integrated and fits well into the rest of software and it is even better than the original Pediatric Lexi Drugs! However, it should have included a built-in calculator and an interaction analyzer to be complete. Also included is a section of antimicrobial therapy which is an extract from the Textbook and provides a focused pediatric antibiotic guide.

The collection also sports a reference in the form of AAP Textbook of Pediatric Care, a News and Updates service, a quick reference tool, Bright Futures, and other resources. For a detailed review of all of these check out the Pediatric Care Online pda4peds review.

Once installed on the PDA you can feel the Unbound Medicine touches throughout the website and the PDA interfaces such as the automatic updates upon synchronization.

This online server link not only updates the content but also updates “myPCO” an online library where search keywords executed on the PDA are transferred and listed there. This is a popular Unbound Medicine technology that has been there since the days of CogniQ Peds. However, that would be much more useful if it is complemented with an online search that can actually be executed on the PDA via wireless connection. This last point is also applicable to related content links which in the native PDA version do not link to the online links it is just said “more content available online”. The search function is much better on the wireless version [To be dicussed in Part 2].

The native PDA version is missing several of the features available in the Web and Wireless versions these are:

The AAP Textbook of Pediatric Care
The Visual Library
Forms and Tools
Clinical Calculators
Algorithms
Patient Handouts

Probably they omitted these sections so as to avoid a drastic growth in the size of the PDA program [currently 6 MB only] but that can be true only for the reference and images while the other sections listed will not consume lots of MBs because they are simply links to external online resources. They could have easily included these and the visual library in the form of links to external pages.

The PCO could have been fantastic if they added the following:

a labs reference, a multifunctional PDA program is NOT complete without this.
a DDx analyzer , the Signs and Symptoms search section only lists causes that are mentioned in the quick reference and there’s no multiple symptoms analysis tool.
a journal access, this is a copyright issue of course but at least listing the TOC of the several AAP periodicals that we all crave for.
a CME tool: The AAP already have great resource in the form of Prep Audio but it would have been nice if CME is collected ‘in-house’ as we are going to use this tool often, check EE+ for such a CME solution.
and a drug interaction tool; they could have added the Lexi-Interact tool to the collection and if that doesn’t work on the Unbound Medicine platform then they could have added the Drug Interaction Facts already developed by Unbound Medicine.

These shortcomings may be rectified by us in the future as The Pediatric Care Online is supposed to be community driven and they welcome comments and suggestion sent to pco@aap.org

to be continued in Part 2 …

Tags: AAP, Unbound Medicine
Posted in All, All-in-one Applications, Best, Evidence Based Pediatrics | 2 Comments »

The AAP Textbook of Pediatric Care

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008

Finally a textbook from the AAP; it has been feeling awkward to refer to Nelson or Forfar when we pediatricians want to check on a trusted pediatric reference!

The American Academy of Pediatrics as a regulator and as a national symbol of pediatric care would have to come up with a reference for all pediatricians and finally it’s here.

What’s interesting here is that the book was made available for the PDA/wireless/Web even before the print edition was released! As of the time this post was written Amazon did not release it and is scheduled for release in November. This reflects the fact that it’s essentially designed for electronic use rather than a traditional paper textbook and also means that the AAP is determined to make serious steps towards the transformation of pediatric literature into the electronic format matching the 21st century digital era.

The textbook is packed within the Pediatric Care Online [PCO] which contains a number of other great resources and references for the pediatrician and is the product of AAP content plus Unbound Medicine development.

The AAP Textbook of Pediatric Care is available through the online and wireless version of PCO and is not yet available for the native PDA software.

The textbook looks like this on a Windows Mobile screen using Internet Explorer Mobile to log in to http://pediatriccareonline.org and then working on AAP Textbook

The Textbook is composed of 10 Parts and 361 Chapters covering Pediatrics from A to Z. Even a chapter on Online resources and the use of PDAs in clinical pediatrics. Each topic is followed by a wonderful When to refer and When to admit sections specifically targeting and guiding primary care providers and junior peds but it is also styled in a format that is useful to any pediatrician regardless of the practice setting.

It is so detailed that the AAP decided to make a summerized version for the PDA platform and correctly named Point-of-Care Quick Reference to make it easy for us finding the required information.

It is also rich in guidelines and chapters are followed by live links AAP policy statements when relevant and being an electronic reference it will be frequently updated as new guidelines are added or changed. Not only AAP contents links but also CDC, FDA, and Pub Med live links making it an incredible evidence based pediatric resource.

As part of PCO it is also cross linked to Bright Futures and Pediatric Lexi Drugs making it even more comprehensive and a reference where you can find all answers.

The price for the print edition alone is $165 you can buy it from Amazon here and for the online version is $250 [members] and $290 [non-members] and if you want both then the price is $350.

This is undoubtedly the ultimate pediatric reference and a must have resource for every practicing pediatrician.

Check out AAP Textbook of Pediatric Care pda4peds review and you may also vote for it in the Best Pediatric PDA Reference poll.

Tags: AAP, Textbook of Pediatric Care
Posted in All, Best, Evidence Based Pediatrics, References & ebooks | 4 Comments »