Medical reference: 5-Minute Clinical Consult

OB/GYN News, Sept 15, 2002 by Thomas G. McLeod, Jon O. Ebbert

Overview: 5-Minute Clinical Consult is an established, concise medical reference. Its content is well organized and rapidly accessible, perfectly designed for use by busy residents in training and practicing physicians alike.

Background: There is an abundance of medical reference software available for handheld computers. These applications facilitate the use of current medical information at the point of care and are consistently ranked as one of the most popular handheld uses among medical residents and practicing physicians. Though many of the early releases in this category of software were products from individual programmers and practitioners, many large, established medical publishing houses are entering the market by adapting content of trusted reference textbooks to a handheld format.

Description: One such reference is 5-Minute Clinical Consult (5MCC). Patterned after the hard-copy medical textbook of the same title, this application has been developed and released for Palm OS and Pocket PC platforms by Skyscape Inc. Information on over 1,000 specific medical and surgical conditions is included, with details organized into Basics, Diagnosis, Treatment, Medications, Follow-Up, and Miscellaneous categories for each disease entity.

Basics includes definitions, epidemiology, and clinical features, as well as causes and risk factors.

Diagnosis presents information on differential, laboratory, pathologic findings, special tests and imaging, and diagnostic procedures.

Treatment includes information on general measures, activity and diet considerations, and patient education resources.

Medications includes detailed information on relevant drugs of choice (and alternatives), as well as contraindications, precautions, and interactions.

Follow-Up presents relevant patient monitoring information, prevention and avoidance points, information on complications, and prognosis concerns.

Miscellaneous includes information on associated conditions, pregnancy considerations, diagnostic codes, and literature references. Additional user-defined notes may be entered for any of the included conditions.

All topics are accessed through a general table of contents or by a specific search function. Additionally, the user may search by associated ICD-9 code or review a medication index.

Personal topics may also be entered, organized in the aforementioned format. Medical educators may particularly welcome such capability as it allows for a convenient way of organizing "lecture notes" for on-the-fly discussions with resident and student learners. Perhaps one of the most useful features of the program is the ability to link to relevant information included in other installed Skyscape products. For example, detailed drug dosing information in A2zDrugs may be directly accessed from links embedded in the body of 5MCC.

Final Notes: Though other handheld medical references may include information on a greater number of medical problems, the concise, well-organized content included in 5MCC, as well as the ability to link to other related products, are distinctive strengths. Other positive features of 5MCC include the capability to enter well-organized Personal topics and notes.

The program can be run from expansion memory card location, though it will be slower. Finally, the annual release of program updates ensures a current reference.

In the end, the 5MCC adaptation for hand-helds is a rapidly accessible, relatively complete medical reference with customizable content--a useful addition to any physician's "electronic black bag."

Contact/Download Information:

Title: 5-Minute Clinical Consult

Company: Skyscape Inc.

Web site: www.skyscape.com

Platform: Palm OS, Pocket PC

Memory: Palm-3.8 MB; Pocket PC-6.8 MB

Cost: $64.95 (free trial demo download available at Web site)

Next month: Medical calculators

DR. THOMAS C. McLEOD AND DR. JON O. EBBERT are with the division of community internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Their reviews are independent evaluations, and they receive no compensation from and do not consult with the manufacturers of the products evaluated in their column.