Posts Tagged ‘Unbound Medicine’

Newer Entries »

Unbound Medicine ‘Central’ Packages coming to the iPhone

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

Unbound Medicine has recently released their first ever ‘bundle-package’ app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, The Nursing Central.

Have a look here, you can click on the full screen button for better view:

You can see that there are so many features and resources packaged in one outstanding iPhone App. This is the first ‘Central’ packages to be released in App Store.

One of the most important features noticed is the wireless update where tapping on the right upper reciprocal update arrows takes us into the most recent database update of the app. These updates are not a joke, they are real and for example they just recently updated Tabers into their latest 21st edition as it was showing before the previous 20th edition and also just recently they added the Handbook of Nursing Diagnosis for institutional subscribers and as an optional add-on to individual subscribers.

The stuffing of this app is astonishing as you can get Davis Drug guide, Medline journals, Davis lab and dxstic tests, Diseases and Disorders, Tabers, and the handbook all for only one subscription price of $160 per year. The added prices of these components goes well above $200 if they are purchased separately.

The Nursing Central just like all other Unbound titles is available as a website. Just visit http://nursing.unboundmedicine.com on your desktop or mobile. The website version has an extra box of recent PDA medical news and it still includes the previous 20th edition of Tabers.

Another high level of functionality is the cross linking button where you can find related entries to your keyword in the other portions of the package. For example as shown above in the video, when reading about Acromagaly in Diseases and Disorders you can cross linked with related info found in the Davis drug guide and lab references, this undoubtedly useful at the beside and integrates the content into a single completer all-in-one application.

This is a great gift from Unbound Medicine and we can’t wait to see Pediatrics Central on our iPhone and iPod Touch devices!

Tags: ,
Posted in All, All-in-one Applications, News, iPhone | No Comments »

Taber’s Medical Dictionary from Unbound Medicine

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

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.

Tags: ,
Posted in All, Dictionaries, iPhone | 6 Comments »

Unbound Medline

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

There are many PDA applications and portals that help us search the medline right from our devices [check this Pda4peds category for a list of these]. But, the Unbound Medline, is a special way of searching the Medline as it is packed with features that are missing from the others.

Here’s how it looked on the Windows Mobile screen;

And here’s how it looks on the iPod Touch;

Comparing the above two screens it’s obvious how the iPhone platform supersedes, with wonderful colors and a large screen which translates to more content per look and with all the “wow factor” that iPhone’s Touch technology adds to the experience.

Just type www.unboundmedicine.com/medline on your device and you will be taken to this free service.

This mobile website is a smart website in that it can recognize whether you are visiting it through your iPhone, iPod Touch Safari or through some other mobile devices so that it changes its skin to fit the platform.

It can also be visited by the desktop also. But why should we visit a third party website when the actual PubMed website is there and fully functional. However, it is definitely helpful when we want to look up the Medline through our mobile device.

This is not new to Unbound Medicine as they were the pioneers in introducing a Medline search function into their popular Mobile Merck Medicus software.

The new features here included the following:

  • A special disease section and special drug look up category and even a medical news filter.
  • Advanced search functionality with optional emphasis and level of evidence.
  • The abstract is linked to the original journal website and the link can be shared with a friend via send email function.

This is, without doubt, the place where we want to be when it comes to looking up the medline on our devices.

Check the Best Medline search application to see this app’s ranking.

You can also get the Unbound Medline as search option when you download our LinkedPeds Toolbar.

Tags:
Posted in All, Free, Journals and Medline Search, Mobile Sites, iPhone | 2 Comments »

Unbound Goes Native on the iPhone

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

Unbound Medicine announced today that the very first native iphone product is out and it’s the Nursing Central.

Unbound Medicine reputation stems from the fact that for every title they publish they provide Palm, Windows Mobile, an online web access, as well as a wireless mobile site that can be accessed by virtually any device with internet browsing capability including the iPhone and iPod Touch.

But this time it’s no longer a web based app, It is a fully native app and there are arguably several advantages of a native app over the web based app as we dicussed in a previous page.

The Nursing Central is provided as free app from iTunes but to get it actually running content you should purchase a yearly $160 subscription from the Unbound Medicine website. This is much like Skyscape approach when they first launched Skyscape Medical Resources but at least they gave us some free goodies with it. Unbound did not.

However; They will provide free switching, which means that if we have say Palm subscription to Merck Bundle then we are allowed to switch to the iphone version at no cost as long as we are still within the yearly validity of the annual subscription. This is something that Skyscape refuses to give!

The app fits really well on the iPhone’s large screen and here’s a quote of one the earliest reviews published on iTunes ” … Nursing Central looks and feels like its built for iPhone, easy to read and easy to navigate. Skyscape, on the other hand, feels like they just repurposed the old graphics from PDAs… ”

Probably it is too early to judge on Unbound Medicine with only one app so far, let’s see what are they going to do with the other titles such as Pediatrics Central and Merck Manual.

Tags:
Posted in All, All-in-one Applications, News, iPhone | 2 Comments »

Unbound Medicine on Blackberry

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

One of the defects that we used to see with the popular Unbound Medicine platform was the missing blackberry compatibility. They used to have Palm and Windows Mobile versions of all of their products and their mobile websites allowed users of any mobile [including blackberry] to have access to their titles.

Now there’s another native platform; The Blackberry.

Unbound Medicine on Blackberry

With the launch of recent blackberry devices such as Blackberry Storm that supports touch interfaces the list of differences between BB and other platforms is getting shorter, now Blackberry is not an email-only machine carried by enterprise employees and business people, it can as well be carried by us doctors. The evidence is that with the addition of Unbound Medicine we now have all the major three developers [Epocrates - Skyscape - Unbound Medicine] up and running on Blackberry.

Not all titles are currently compatible with the new Blackberry platform but the list is impressive as a ‘just-started’ platform check the List of Currently Available Unbound Medicine Titles on Blackberry.

This will definitely please the BB users and will kick another Unbound Medicine industry standards.

Let’s see if they are going to make an equivalent native iPhone platform.

Tags: ,
Posted in All, News | 2 Comments »

Unbound Medicine on Blackberry

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

One of the defects that we used to see with the popular Unbound Medicine platform was the missing blackberry compatibility. They used to have Palm and Windows Mobile versions of all of their products and their mobile websites allowed users of any mobile [including blackberry] to have access to their titles.

Now there’s another native platform; The Blackberry.

Unbound Medicine on Blackberry

With the launch of recent blackberry devices such as Blackberry Storm that supports touch interfaces the list of differences between BB and other platforms is getting shorter, now Blackberry is not an email-only machine carried by enterprise employees and business people, it can as well be carried by us doctors. The evidence is that with the addition of Unbound Medicine we now have all the major three developers [Epocrates - Skyscape - Unbound Medicine] up and running on Blackberry.

Not all titles are currently compatible with the new Blackberry platform but the list is impressive as a ‘just-started’ platform check the List of Currently Available Unbound Medicine Titles on Blackberry.

This will definitely please the BB users and will kick another Unbound Medicine industry standards.

Let’s see if they are going to make an equivalent native iPhone platform.

Tags: ,
Posted in All, News | 2 Comments »

The Pediatric Care Online (Part 2 0f 2)

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Continued from Part 1..

The Pediatric Care Online looks wonderful on the large iPhone screen as shown below:

Unbound Medicine unlike Skyscape did not make a special iPhone website but rather for all their products they made universal wireless websites that can be accessed by any device whether Palm, iPhone, or Windows Mobile. This time the website really fits the iPhone screen and the Pediatric Care Online looks and feels just incredible on iPhone. For a higher resolution slide show and further details visit PCO on iPhone pda4peds review page.

Of note here is that the wireless version [unlike the PDA version] does not miss any of the features of the Pediatric Care Online including all of those listed in the previous post. In addition the search box is available throughout all pages and will look up information across all sections.

To see how the website looks on the Windows Mobile screen see this pda4peds review or Video demonstration page.

Further more the wireless version cross linking is better than the native app as it is linked to all of the resources and it has more extensive external linking to online resources.

Speaking of external links this is the first PDA application where we have references live linked to PubMed articles [Even UpToDate they list the references only and provides no links to PubMed URLs] and this is a great feature of an evidence based resource.

The Visual Library [Wireless and Web only] is a great atlas of pediatrics where we have rashes, syndromes, tables, illustrations, CTs, X rays, and other fantastic images. Other PDA pediatric databses does not provide such a rich library of images [except perhaps UpToDate].

Bottom line: The Pediatric Care Online is a great evidence based and trustworthy mobile pediatric reference that can be extremely useful in our daily practice and it may shape the future of pediatric references forever, However it still needs considerable improvements and hopefully will see these enhancements added gradually in the near future.

If you like it enough you can vote for PCO as a Best All-in-one Pediatric PDA application and also as a Best Evidence Based Reference.

Tags:
Posted in All, All-in-one Applications, Mobile Sites, iPhone | 7 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:

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

The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine; This time from Unbound Medicine

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

This is where we’ve seen Unbound Medicine winning over the Skyscape! The new 7th edition is provided by Unbound Medicine and Skyscape alike. Being a point of comparison Unbound Medicine did not want to miss this chance to prove themselves and they did a wonderful job, They provided a PDA, a Web, and Wireless access to the ebook!

Oxford Handbook by Unbound Medicine

Click here to read Pda4peds Review

Click here to check Oxford Handbook Website

All versions come for one price (yearly subscription for the web and wireless) which is quite reasonable @ $45. Now with the wireless access even iphone users can look up the ebook (see image above).

We wish that Oxford University Press starts thinking seriuosly of developing Oxford Handbook of Paediatrics….

Tags: ,
Posted in All, References & ebooks, UK Paediatrics | 3 Comments »

Newer Entries »