Easy, free, excellent resource for the PalmOS
Written: Jan 19 '01 (Updated Jan 20 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy to use and free!
Cons: No Macintosh Autoupdate!
The Bottom Line: Easy to use, great reference that is free and immediately available on your Palm.
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| scottcolson's Full Review: ePocrates Rx 4.0 |
I recently got a Handspring Visor and immediately downloaded ePocrates qRx. As a resident physician, I find myself looking for "just in time" information when I have a question. I used to find this sort of information by carrying books in my white coat. ePocrates qRx is an excellent tool and a great way to thin out my white coat!
There is a large searchable database of medications and for each medication there are different subsets of information available:
1. Adult Dosing: It provides standard adult dosing for medications. If a medication has different uses, it will list different doses by indication (i.e. hypertension vs. CHF dosing of Accupril)
2. Pediatric Dosing: Gives peds dosing, usually in the form of mg/kg.
3. Contraindications/Cautions: Specific for each drug, (i.e. renal failure, hepatic failure, pregnancy, etc.) or other times you shouldn't use the drug.
4. Drug Interactions: Listed by drug name (under the drug you are looking up). These are easily clickable as to the nature of the interaction (i.e. hyperkalemia, monitor serum K)
5. Adverse Reactions: Divided into serious and common.
6. Cost: (an excellent tool!!) Lists available doses and an example of cost for each. These are taken from www.drugstore.com
7. Other Information: This sections lists safety in pregnancy and lactation, metabolism, excretion, whether it is controlled by the DEA or not (schedule II, III, etc.), Drug class (ACE inhibitor for accupril), and mechanism of action.
8. Notes: A custom section where you can make notes for yourself.
All this in a product that is free for download at www.epocrates.com. In February, they are supposed to come out with qID, an infectious disease reference.
My only complaint is about the Autoupdate feature. This feature allows you to automatically update whenever you HotSync as the database is updated monthly! What a great concept! However, as a Macintosh user, this is unavailable to me. They say it will become more available in the future. For now, I update the long way.
Try it out!
I plan to continue writing on medical topics (even though the medical topics have all been moved to "editorial" or "advice" status.
I have started a webring of people who enjoy writing medical epinions when they are looking for specific authors or topics. See my profile page for details.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
scottcolson
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Scott Colson, MD
Location: OH to NV, to IA, finally in MN!
Reviews written: 106
Trusted by: 91 members
About Me:
Family Physician practicing in the Twin Cities, MN
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