Topic:  Skyscape: A Doctor in your Pocket Date: 11/04/2003
	Skyscape: A Doctor in your Pocket Last week we began talking about families of software dedicated to different professions - specifically the medical community. If you missed it, it can be found here. Meanwhile, let's tae a look at some of the products themselves - and how you don't need to be a doctor in order to find them useful. Picture, if you will, the ability to have, at your disposal, the knowledge of over a hundred medical reference books at your disposal. At the tap of your stylus you can pull databases of drugs, diagnoses, and definitions of just about anything medical. And this is something that can benefit the lay person as well as the medical professional. Let me give you an example. My wife has been sick for the last three months and has had about 15 or so new prescriptions filled. She also helps in sorting out her grandfathers numerous medications (as many or more than her own) into daily doses. Both sets of prescriptions are kept in those prescription organizers that have multiple dividers in them to separate each day’s medications into morning, noon, evening, and bedtime. Now let’s say, for the sake of this example, that the medical dividers and all the bottles were open on the table for the purpose of refilling them and they all got knocked over by your kids– spilling varying amounts of 30-40 different prescription drugs into the floor. All attempts were made to match up the prescriptions with like ones remaining in the original containers but several of the containers were empty thus giving nothing to compare them to. What do you do now? At that point you whip your kids (I mean send them to stand in a corner) and whip out your trusty Clié to open up Skyscape’s Ident-a-Drug program. I pick up a capsule at random and read the code "EGIS 112" on it. I do a search for "EGI" and come up with 2 options: EGIS 111 and EGIS 112. After choosing the correct one I find out that the capsule is indeed a red one containing 20 mg of Piroxicam. OK, what it the world in piroxicam? I check all the empty bottles that I have and don’t find anything close to piroxicam. At that point finding the answer is still easy. I exit Ident-a-Drug and open up another Skyscape product: DrDrugs. I perform a search of Piroxicam. I barely get 3-4 letters into spelling it and find it displayed in my screen. With a simple tap of my stylus I find out, among other things, that Piroxicam is the generic form of Feldene. I can also read that it is used to treat osteoarthritis, the side effects, drug interactions, dosages, and lots of other information that, while interesting, would mean a lot more to someone in the medical profession than to me. With all that information at my disposal I can quickly determine whose medications are whose and get them back into their original containers. Skyscape’s products are not limited to prescription drugs, however. They also include databases of information on natural supplements such as their "Guide to Popular Natural Products" and their "Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database." Both of these, as illustrated by the screen shots below, include a wealth of information on natural vitamins, supplements, and homeopathic remedies. One other very useful tool for the lay person and the medical professional alike is "Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary," a comprehensive database full of extensive information on thousands of medical terms. How many times have we been to the doctor’s office and been diagnosed with something containing 47 letters that we can’t even pronounce, much less understand. Taber’s can help. Take a look at the following screen shots for an example. The most popular programs offered by Skyscape, however, are those developed exclusively for the medical professional. One such program is 5MCC, the "5-Minute Clinical Consult" that provides doctors with information on diagnosing illnesses as well as suggestions for treatments, prescriptions, and follow ups. The 5MCC program is designed for use by the general practitioner. Many other specialty fields (about 30 in all) have a Clinical Consult program and other resources available and customized just for them. For more information you can visit Skyscape at www.skyscape.com.
	Category: Clie Connections