Here’s is just another outstanding product from Unbound Medicine, a complete PDA, iPhone, Wireless, and Web solution all for one price. To check the web or wireless websites visit Tabers.com on your desktop or mobile respectively, for native PDA software keep reading..
Let’s see how it looks on the iPod Touch,
This App is fantastically fitting into the iPhone’s user interface and providing an exceptional experience, you can flip through the entries and pages seamlessly. However, some delay was noted until the pages load this is probably because of the size of the app [30 MB] and is likely to be corrected in future versions.
The new 21st edition also includes audio pronunciations of the entries that can be played from the Unbound Medicine servers. So Internet connection is needed to listen to these files, but that’s justifiable, because if they had uploaded these MP3 files into the app, we could have easily end up in a Gigabyte app! Also, understandably, there are no audio playbacks of combined terms.
Some of the entries are also equipped with images and illustrations which make Tabers stand out in the field of digital medical dictionaries.
The home page as seen above incorporates the main index, a list of favorites that you compile, and appendices. The latter is a nice collection of useful medical information that includes, normal lab values, abbreviations, recommended immunizations schedule, and many others. However, as it is always the case with Unbound Medicine titles, these are merely tables missing indexing and search functionality and quite difficult to navigate, yet they are much better than the Palm and WM versions due to the larger screen.
The 60K plus entries include everything you can think of from diseases to drugs to syndromes and the rarest acronyms and physical signs. Some common diseases are even quoted with extended information about history and physicals and management. However, and particularly in drugs, they still need to update the database for example a search for imitinab revealed no results and many of the drug classes are not fully listed.
One of the greatest advantages of this software is the cross linking of terms, so that you can easily find your way through this huge medical database.
Now, let’s see how it looks on Windows Mobile;
It is quite embarrassing to have the title pages misspelled as Tabers’s specially for a dictionary! I was thinking that I might be wrong and Tabers’s is correct!
Also, missing from the Windows Mobile version is the wireless updates, however, this is not a big issue as you can easily download the latest updates online as long as you are current subscriber.
In summary, this application from Unbound Medicine represents a top of the line product and that’s why FA Davis has given the website http://www.tabers.com for Unbound Medicine for complete management and it’s unlikely that Skyscape will produce any updated versions of this popular medical dictionary.
[Update 2009-03-16] The last statement is wrong (see comments). Skyscape also produced a 21st edition of Tabers available for all platforms including the iPhone and here’s the download/purchase page.
