USBMIS Current Consult Medicine 2007 review
Hello everyone. Last week I reviewed USBMIS´s SkinDx for Palm OS, a high quality product made by this company. Now they have kindly provided us with a full copy of Current Consult Medicine 2007 for Palm OS, so we can again analyze one of their products. As you all know, there is also a print version of this same book (with 1300 pages and in the $60-70 price range). At the same time both are based on “Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 2007”, one of the top clinical references nowadays.
It is important for the busy clinician with a PDA (as many of us are) , to have a reference that provides only the right amount of information without sacrificing important stuff in order to be used during clinical rounds or outpatient settings (after all, the deep research on a topic usually its done in home or at free time). We all know Current Consult succeeds at that on paper, but can this latest electronic incarnation match or even be a replacement to its print brother? That’s what we will be going to see.
For this review, once again I used a Tx with a 4 gb sd card , and installation was done by synchronizing the files inside the zip one. Sync was painless, with no software conflicts with other programs.
The size of the entire program is about 9.86 megs, so its of no surprise you wont want to put this on your internal memory. As it is the case with other USBSMIS`s products, the VFS compatibility allowed us to split the program putting the main prc on internal memory, and the rest of the files on SD card. In this setting, the program loaded in just 1-2 seconds, and performance inside it was outstanding. I mean, despite the large database, there were absolutely no delays or “loading screens” once we were navigating on it (even when loading figures / tables, or saving bookmarks/notes) . However when we moved the entire program (prc included) onto the expansion card, the loading screen took 7 seconds to disappear, but once we passed this, the performance was the same than in the previous setting.
I will make a stop here in order to make a commentary on something I consider important (from a cosmetic point of view). Have you noticed that every single USBMIS program has a different icon and skin? (although the navigation ,search and other features are almost invariably the same). I mean this may sound irrelevant, but it’s a nice touch from their part to give every program “a personality” of their own, without compromising functionality. As it is in real life, wouldn’t it be boring to have all of our books have the same cover over and over? I think they had this concept in mind, and I really must congratulate them for that.
Well lets go on with the review. The program has 3 main screens (any of which can be setup to be the main screen) as shown below:
The Index screen lets you make a fast search on a desired topic.
The Tools screen contains the figures and tables if you want to see them separately from its respective topic.
The Contents screen is organized much in the way of the actual book dividing the program in segments.
As in the book , the diagnoses are also divided in “Detail” and in “Brief”, both differ in the amount of information given depending on its relevance (for example Outcome information and Evidence Web links can only be found on the “in Detail” sections) . Another feature present in this screen worthy of mentioning is the Differential Diagnosis tool. This tool is based on the popular Diagnosaurus PDA program. I think this addition is excellent as it provides the contents of this fabulous reference within just one package. For an example, take a look at the following screen:
As you can see, there are some squares next to some of the diagnosis. Those are links which take you to the actual topic (the green ones to “In Detail” and the red ones to “In Brief”) .Here I will present my first gripe of the program and it is that in my opinion all the topics within the database of the program should be reachable from this Differential Diagnosis list, but it is not the case. For example, in the topic above, I had to “manually” search for typhoid fever when it could be readily accessible from there. I hope they can fix this out in future releases.
Lets now take a look to a topic “In Detail” (in this case Diabetes Mellitus type 2) in order to see more about the program. In the next picture, you can see how a specific topic is distributed (much like in the book):
In the following screens you can see better how the actual content of that topic is presented on your screen. And although you can not change the fonts or size of the letters, I think the way it is presented will make it easily understandable and readable by anyone.
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For the sake of answering the question proposed in the first paragraph of this review I had to compare the contents of the print edition with this electronic incarnation. Great was my surprise to see that the entire content of the topics was translated into the PDA. And best of all not only just the text. For example, take a look at the following screens:
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Some tables are seen much in the way as their print counterparts. If the table is a little big (as it is sometimes the case), you can just scroll as we did (see picture above). Also you can change to landscape view to have a better view of the tables. In addition to that, the USBMIS team has included separate footnotes to be accessible with a button of the same name or by clicking the respective footnote number inside the table. (this is also true for figures)
In a really nice move by USBMIS, they converted the really big tables seen in the book into a more accessible format as seen in the next picture:
In this way, what would have been otherwise cumbersome and painful to browse, becomes easily accessible without losing any of the content of the original table. Kudos to that, USBMIS team!
And well, lets move to the figures. I can gladly say that the figures presented in this program, are not only true to the ones from the book, but they have a quality few other PDA programs have. The figures are crystal clear, easily scrollable if too big, and make the perfect complement to the text presented in the topics.
And finally each topic ends with some references on clinical evidence, practice guidelines and websites for further information, as seen in the picture below:
And here I will present my second (and last) gripe about the program, and it is also in the form of links, this time as hyperlinks. Although they were a lot of internet references, neither of them could be accessible by tapping them. Nowadays, many of us have internet-enabled devices (including software to open docs or pdf files), and it would be nice that program designers take that into account, and add hyperlinks so that the references mentioned in their programs could be accessible just by tapping on the screen. Hope they can also add this feature in future releases.
Verdict: The perfect companion for the busy clinician. Not only it brings the entire content of the book to the palm of our hands (including high quality graphics and tables), it also delivers the excellent speed, stability, performance and features seen in previous USBMIS ´s programs in order to form a rock solid package no clinician should miss. Programs like this are the ones that truly make our PDAs indispensable in current clinical practice. In a just a few words: Outstanding!
Disclosure: This review is an independent one and not sponsored or paid for by any party including USBMIS.
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About the author, Eder: Eder Olortegui hails from South America and finished medical internship in 2007. A huge fan of palms (former owner of a T3 , now a proud owner of a Tx+ 4gb SD + universal keyboard) and especially palm medical related info. |
Great review, as medical student I was thinking this program would help for 3rd year clinical rotations. Would you agree or prefer another program(s)?
Hi Casey, Im glad you liked the review. I think that CCM2007 would suit perfectly your needs for your clinical rotations. Another program you should check is Clinician Pocket Reference (a.k.a “Scutt Monkey Handbook” ) also from USBMIS, which has been recently launched. The later can also be useful to you since many people say it covers more basic stuff on it. (disease processes , lab interpretation, etc)
I hope i could help you,
Regards,
Eder