Tech 201
epocrates® ESSENTIALS
Integration, Power, and Value
By Chris Tidwell, DO
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Dr. Tidwell is an Emergency Medicine
Resident at Grandview Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio.
He has authored and co-authored several publications
including Looking for a Personal Digital Assistant? ACEP
Reference + Resource Guide 2003.
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I have been using ePocrates products
since early 1999. The aspect of the company that I have admired
the most has been ePocrates’ dedication
to developing innovative new products. It has continually been
one step ahead of the demands and expectations of the medical
community with such clinical references as ePocrates Rx® drug
and formulary reference, ePocrates ID® infectious disease
guide, ePocrates Rx Pro™ premium clinical reference, ePocrates
Rx Online™ desktop drug reference, ePocrates Dx™,
ePocrates Lab™, its newest test and diagnostic tool, and
now ePocrates® Essentials, its all-in-one mobile guide to
drugs, diseases, and diagnostics.
ePocrates Essentials is powered by information
from the ePocrates Medical Information team as well as other
sources, including
Griffith’s 5-Minute Clinical Consult (5MCC). ePocrates
Essentials provides me with everything I need from diagnosis
to treatment and everything in between. Being an emergency medicine
resident physician, I need to be highly efficient with my time
and energies. ePocrates Essentials really helps busy physicians
because it incorporates ePocrates Rx Pro and Lab with a more
user-friendly and regularly updated version of 5MCC, creating
an “all-in-one” clinical reference. ePocrates Essentials
allows me to utilize all three ePocrates applications together
and provides a platform that meets virtually all of my needs
from a PDA standpoint: extensive drug and alternative medication
monographs, MultiCheck® drug interaction checker, formulary
information and cost of meds for my patients, ePocrates ID infectious
disease guide, ePocrates Lab (which will be discussed later),
tables and guidelines, DocAlert® messages, MedMath medical
calculator (in the Palm OS version syncing with Windows desktops),
AutoUpdate, a new weight-based dosing calculator, plus information
on more than 1,200 diseases, disease descriptions, differential
diagnosis, ICD-9-CM codes, and much more. I really like the fact
that the products come bundled together and that they are regularly
edited and updated. There are other clinical references out there,
but none in my opinion begin to come close to having the power,
flexibility, and portability of ePocrates Essentials.
The core content for disease diagnosis
is provided in ePocrates Dx, which seamlessly integrates 5MCC.
This “Consult” series
is
legendary for its depth and clarity and the value it provides
to the busy healthcare professional. And now ePocrates has redesigned
the information to fit within
the ePocrates look and feel. They have made the reference quick and accessible
by arranging topics in alphabetical order for easy searching. For each topic,
there are concise sections covering “Basics” (eg, description and
epidemiology), “Signs/Symptoms,” “Causes,” “Diagnosis” (including
differential diagnosis and tests), “Treatment,” “Medications” (which
conveniently links listed drugs to the ePocrates Rx database), “Related
Topics,” “Notes,” and “Miscellaneous” information
that includes ICD-9-CM codes for each disease. When time is of the essence,
ePocrates Dx makes
my life easier. Not only is the format easy to use, but the information is
also concise, and I am always confident that it is up-to-date (unlike some
other versions of 5MCC) because ePocrates updates and adds monographs on a
regular basis.
Dx have been effortlessly integrated; the navigation is far more intuitive
than with the regular 5MCC. For example, there is no need to exit a program
and access another when a user has both applications open. Although they
are separate, they
are integrated in a useful way. In the “Medications” section of
ePocrates Dx, clicking on an underlined drug name (also known as a “jump
link”) will take you immediately into that specific drug monograph in
ePocrates Rx Pro. From here, a user instantly has access to information on
dosing, contraindications and cautions, drug interactions, adverse reactions,
and more.
Another thing that I find useful in ePocrates
Rx Pro is the new weight-based dosing calculator (in adult and
pediatric versions).
For medications with dosing by weight, the drug dose appears
underlined as a “jump link;” one click brings up
a dosing calculator
for that drug. Then, a user need only enter the amount, weight, and frequency
to calculate proper dosing information. This is a wonderfully quick tool to
have within ePocrates Rx Pro.
A new feature in the ePocrates Essentials suite is ePocrates
Lab. This feature is simply amazing. It provides busy clinicians
with up-to-date information on collection, interpretation, reimbursement,
and follow-up for hundreds of tests. It provides the basics,
reference range, interpretation, preparation/collection, and
the cost/billing associated with each lab test. It provides a
list of ICD-9 codes commonly associated with each lab test and
provides recommendations for follow-up. It also is an excellent
source for just-as-valuable, though esoteric information. Have
you ever forgotten what color tube a serum ammonia needs to be
collected in during the midst of a busy ER shift? ePocrates Lab
will provide the information instantly: green top on ice. Moreover,
the pricing for the
bundle is very reasonable. A one-year subscription to ePocrates Essentials
runs just under $140. The technical demands placed on an individual user’s
PDA are minimal. I am currently using a Palm Tungsten E; it took less than
five minutes to install this program, with very little hassle. And Essentials’ memory
requirement of 4.7MB-6.3MB in this day and age of 256MB and 512MB Secure Digital
Cards is negligible. Many of the new Palm OS-based PDAs routinely come with
at least 32MB of internal memory.
Strictly from an emergency medicine perspective, I would like
to see the 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Clinical Consult incorporated
with ePocrates, along with a critical care calculator for pressors,
lytics, etc. Such a critical care suite from ePocrates will likely
be developed in the near future. I am continually amazed by the
technological intuition the company exhibits in its drive to
create such tremendously useful products for the medical community.
I’ve been actively involved in
the PDA technology associated with medicine since 1999. It
has revolutionized the manner in
which clinicians collect, assimilate, and distribute information.
Gone are the days of the white coat with countless medical pocketbooks
and dosing cards stuffed into every pocket. The standard now
is a PDA and a patient list. The last book I actually carried
in my white coat was Bakerman’s
ABC’s of Interpretive Laboratory Data. ePocrates Essentials has relegated
it to my bookshelf, right next to many other tomes that in the pre-PDA world
were vital to the survival of any resident. ePocrates Essentials is a worthy
addition to the ePocrates family; by combining ePocrates Rx Pro, Dx, and Lab
it brings even more value to my medical arsenal.
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