Android
How to get Epocrates Essentials “Free for Medical Students” deal if you have Android or Palm Web OS
As we mentioned before, Epocrates is giving away its premium version, “Epocrates Essentials”, valued at $169, to all U.S. medical students. If you already have Epocrates Essentials, they are extending your subscription by a year.
The only problem with the free one year subscription offer – there is no Epocrates Essentials for the Android or Palm Web OS (Palm-Pre) platforms.
These two platforms only have the free beta version of Epocrates.
With the recent popularity of the HTC Evo and Droid Incredible, there are plenty of medical students who surely feel left out in the cold – especially since the deal is only valid in the month of August, and Epocrates probably won’t roll out with premium versions for the Android or Web OS platforms in the next 11 days.
One of our astute writers, Jason Paluzzi, a proud Android owner, looked into this further and found out how Android and Palm Web OS users can still get in on this deal. Continue on to see what he found.
Archimedes 360 is a medical calculator that can answer the most common or the most obscure questions [Android app review]
By Jason Paluzzi, MS
Information is everything in the field of medicine. Often, it’s necessary to evaluate laboratory or prognostic data in ways that even the most up to date medical computer system cannot provide. Other times you may want to evaluate a patient’s prognosis quickly for point-of-care medical decisions or for speaking with family members. For these reasons, it’s useful to have a quality medical calculator on hand.
This is where Archimedes 360 comes in. While some calculators focus on a specific subset of medicine, Archimedes aims to be an all inclusive calculator, with well over 200 equations (In all honesty, I didn’t count, but I’ll take Skyscape’s word for it). These equations vary in scope from physiological principles (such as the A-a gradient) to prognostic values (ABCD2 stroke score) to pharmacology and population-epidemiology.
Results of using Google translate for medical communication on the Android OS
by: Jason Paluzzi
Whether you’re a medical student, resident, nurse, or physician, you’ve no doubt encountered a language barrier at some point in your career. Interpreters are available for common languages in most settings, but if time is an issue, you may need to deliver care faster than an interpreter can arrive.
Over the years, people have gotten by with language dictionaries, hand gestures, family members, blue phones, and even smart phone apps all of which have proven somewhat cumbersome and impersonal in their own way.
Google Translate presents a possible solution to this problem. As an extension of their widespread integration of speech-to-text throughout the android platform, Google created a language app centered around a straightforward concept; enter one language, output in another.
Can Android teach EKG interpretation? An overview of three popular Android EKG apps [Android medical app review]
Repetition, repetition, repetition. Most of the information I retained from the first few years of medical school is what I learned by repetition. Unless I use some bit of knowledge regularly, I tend to forget it. Reading an EKG is one of those skills in medicine that requires a lot of background knowledge, the ability to recognize patterns, and the clinical experience to know what looks “okay” and what looks “definitely not okay.” While no app or textbook can replace the practical skills that one acquires through months or years of interpreting real EKGs and seeing patients, it helps to have a quick reference of ground rules and basic pattern descriptions to refresh one’s mind on the basic reading rules of EKGs.
Medical students and residents have been carrying around pocket-sized EKG manuals for decades. But over the past several months a few ECG/EKG apps have cropped up on the Android Market, hoping to fill the need for an electronic alternative.
Here I take a look at three EKG interpretation and learning tools for Android mobile devices: EKGdroid, EKG:Advanced, and EKG Calipers. Can Android really replace those pocket manuals and teach the next generation of doctors to read EKGs?
Google’s Android OS strategy is following Microsoft’s lead – not Apple’s
We’re giving away 5 promo codes for one of the most popular PDF readers in the App Store via the comments section of this post. We’ve reviewed it on this site before and now the app is boasting some significant upgrades.
There were fireworks at the recent Google developer conference (“Google I/O”). Some of this was well deserved excitement around features found in the newest version of the Android mobile operating system (version 2.2, “Froyo”). Much of the fireworks, however, were due to loud, public taunting of the iPhone and Steve Jobs by senior Google executives.
Since everybody loves a contest, these statements by Google speakers were widely covered in the tech press and predictably stirred up heated comment threads throughout the blogosphere.
In truth, the schoolyard level of the rhetoric (see Kara Swisher) probably does not serve Google’s interests in the long run. This is because Google’s business relationships are symbiotic: Google needs its partners’ trust to continue delivering to Google, via their devices and services, massive amounts of user data for its primary business, which is selling advertising.
Top 5 Free Android Medical Apps
Health care professionals and students using Android are probably wondering what Android apps may be helpful in the health care setting.
Android developers continue to add more apps to the Market that relate to health and medical practice. While the field of apps relevant to health care professionals on Android lags far behind the iPhone OS platform, there are several apps worth noting.
Here, we look at some of the more useful medical apps for clinicians, and list a few apps for patients as well.
The fact that we chose a “Top 5″ (and not “Top 10″), indicates just how limited the Android Market currently is for medical apps.
Michelle Obama’s Fight Against Childhood Obesity Comes to the iPhone and Android – with $40,000 At Stake
The First Lady yesterday announced an innovative new component to her Lets Move! campaign against childhood obesity yesterday – a call to developers to produce healthcare apps for the iPhone/Android/etc that encourage children to make healthy food choices and exercise more. Its an interesting and forward-looking approach to a major problem. While popular attention is focused often on adult obesity (e.g. the classic hip-level video of larger Americans walking), childhood obesity is not only a problem now but a big danger for the future. The fact that type II diabetes management is now a pediatric problem should be enough of a cry for help and this is definitely an interesting part of the answer – but at least one major challenge has to be addressed for success.
The program basically works like this – developers submit apps that either encourage healthy eating or exercise. A number of USDA datasets have been made available such as food groups for a 1,000 items, calorie counts, and so on that should be used in either the development of a “tool” or a “game” that promotes healthy behaviors. The apps are intended to benefit pre-teens but can be geared to kids or parents. Beyond those stipulations, pretty much anything goes. Oh and by the way, the winners – as judged by a panel including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and US CTO Aneesh Chopra – will get a total of $40k from the USDA.
Help Us Help You!! What iPhone And Android Medical or Healthcare Apps Do You Want Reviewed?
Our goal here is simple – to help connect physicians, nurses, PA’s, NP’s, EMT’s, and students to the apps that will help make them better at caring for patients. Whether that’s by learning anatomy better, having tools to share with your patients, or an accessible refresher on how to do procedures, there’s a lot out there that could us and you take better care of physicians. So please let us know (in the comments section here) what apps you would like to see reviewed. We’d especially appreciate links to the app’s iTunes page. We want to be responsive to what our readers want, so give us a hand by pointing us to the apps you’d like to know more about. In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for apps that we want to make sure our peers to know about.
The Company That Could Turn Your iPhone Into Part of a Global Disease Surveillance Program – A Look at the Public Health Work of Northrop Grunman
For anyone interested in global health, there are a cadre of organizations that typically spring to mind as leaders – the CDC, USAID, and the Gates Foundation for example. I had the opportunity while at HIMSS to chat with folks from another organization that put boots on the ground immediately after the Haiti earthquake, is running programs worldwide on a number of endemic diseases (HIV/AIDs, malaria, lymphatic filiarisis), and operates a high-tech lab in Atlanta to develop field tools for public health workers. This is all from what I knew as a major defense contractor. But you’d never guess the that if you talk to Amy King (VP, Health IT) and Tom Verbeck (CTO, Health IT) of Northrop Grunman. Northrop entered the public health sphere just over a decade ago, looking to parlay the expertise it had developed via defense work – such as IT capabilities from intelligence projects – into a new health IT division. Since then, it has grown to employ over 200 epidemiologists along with scores of engineers, developers, clinicians, and other professionals, all of whom apply their range of talents to world’s biggest global health problems.
You may be wondering where the “mobile health” part comes in. For that, lets talk about a specific project that Northrop worked on to track HIV/AIDs in the Dominican Republic – a great anecdote of how mobile technology, on easy to use mobile devices, plus a strong IT support infrastructure can make a big difference and even turn every iPhone owner in the world into a public health field worker.
