| Mobile Clinical Decision Support |
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| Written by Jennifer Flaten | ||||||||
| Friday, 30 April 2010 00:00 | ||||||||
 Physicians frequently turn to clinical decision support software to help diagnose and treat patients. Not only does the software facilitate an accurate diagnosis, but also many doctors feel it contributes to reduced healthcare costs. By providing an accurate diagnosis the first time, return visits are eliminated, along with referrals and unnecessary tests.
Since doctors are never without their mobile devices, it is no surprise that several vendors offer mobile clinical decision support tools making it even easier for the physicians to treat a patient. For example, VisualDx Mobile, which is available for both iPhone and iPod Touch, allows physicians to visually validate a diagnosis and the doctor can search for a specific diagnosis by name. VisualDX provides a gallery of thousands of images, and variations of each disease are offered by age, stage, and skin type giving doctors the ability to perform side-by-side comparisons. Skyscape offers 5 Minute Clinical Consult 2011. With 5MCC, the doctor has access to over 900 medical conditions and it presents the doctor with a flow chart style view of the diagnosis, giving the doctor a step-by-step guide to the various conditions and treatments. In addition, Skyscape provides full color images for visual comparison. Another feature Skyscape offer is SmartLink. With Smartlink, the doctor can cross-reference all of their Skyscape resources at one time. Another choice is the Epocrates DX for Pocket PC. It offers a database of over 1200 diseases and conditions ensuring that the doctor gets the right diagnosis the first time. Compatibility with the doctor’s mobile device of choice is no longer a concern. PEPID medical decision support is available for practically every mobile device including Blackberry, Palm, Windows Phone, iPhone and recently the company released a version compatible with the Google Android phone. | ||||||||
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About the Author: Jeff Merron is a full-time freelance editor, journalist, and copywriter who has written for the New York Times Magazine, ESPN.com, Slate, Byte Magazine, Macworld, Consumers Digest, and many other national publications. He's also a regular contributor to IT Business Insider and 108, a baseball magazine. He has a Ph.D. in Mass Communication Research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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