The Medical Professional's Guide to Handheld Computing
In King's Lynn, my first year of practice as a physician was also the first year of practice of some physician assistants. They were wonderful.
But their profession was new to the UK., so the hospital's management placed many restrictions to minimise risks to patients. In the USA, the profession has been established for many years, and its members have more confidence and autonomy.
The result of this confidence is books like “The Medical Professional's Guide to Handheld Computing”. Its author, Chris Helopoulos, is a physician assistant and a trainer for other physician assistants.
He is also a teacher of handheld computers,
and a good one too.
The main problem with the book is the name. The book's role is really
as a medical professional's guide to Palm Powered computers. The only
coverage of Pocket PCs is in the second chapter, which discusses purchasing
decisions, and explains that “Palm OS currently offers more software
for medical professionals”. The rest of book focuses entirely
on software for Palm Powered machines.
This focus provides comprehensive coverage. Chapters three and four are good alternatives to the manual although of course they lack the details that are specific to each new model. The remaining chapters cover an impressive range of medical software, including freeware and shareware packages.
The accompanying CD has many of these packages, which makes the book particularly good value. Where the book discusses commercial packages, the CD contains links to the web sites of the packages. Curiously however the links are in Microsoft Word documents rather than web pages.
Of course, like any book covering computers, this one risked obsolescence as soon as it was printed. This is clear from the screen shots, which show monochrome screens at 160x160 pixels, while today's models' screens are at least 320x320 pixels in resolution, and all but the cheapest display vibrant colours. But this does not affect the medical software described: the author has identified the most popular and useful packages, and these will likely continue to occupy the same importance over the next few years.
Furthermore the book explains the principles of finding good software, and learning how to use it.
If you are new to Palm Powered computers and you work in healthcare, this book is well worth the price.
Book details
Title - The Medical Professional's Guide to
Handheld Computing
Authors - Chris Helopoulos
Publisher - Jones & Bartlett Pub
ISBN - 0763731528
Buy the book
From Amazon.com
or Amazon
UK.
