When five minutes can make a difference, the handheld version of the popular book, Griffith's 5 Minute Clinical Consult 2002 (5MCC), provides a quick and efficient way to locate information on current medical diagnosis and treatment. An essential tool for the health care professional's electronic black bag, it can be easily transported from the exam room or be taken on rounds. By presenting clinical information in a standardized outlined format, health care professionals can quickly retrieve information on a variety of medical disorders with the tap of a stylus. This handy reference tool is useful for primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and specialists.
The installation directions available at the Skyscape Website are designed for novices and are easy to follow. A demonstration version of 5MCC is available for download on a trial basis. This program, however, is memory intensive, consuming 3.6 MB out of 8 MB on a Palm Pilot IIIxe. Newer personal digital assistants (PDAs) with a memory expansion card are able to offload the program to memory to save space on the handheld computer.
There are more than 1,000 topics from abnormal Pap smear to Zollinger-Ellison syndrome. The content is indexed with more than 7,500 terms and medications. Information can be quickly located by using the Main Index, Medication Index, ICD-9CM Index, or Table of Contents or by typing in a topic in the Look For area (Figure 1). For example, to locate information about pulmonale, Cor, simply type “pul” in the Look For area or scroll down through the Topics list from the Main Index (Figure 2). To maximize the information on the smaller handheld screen, six vertical tabs located on the right-hand side of the screen provide easy access to information in the following areas:
Figure 1 Griffith's 5 Minute Clinical Consult 2002 (5MCC) Main Index
Figure 2 Sample search in 5MCC
Basics (B): description of disorder, incidence or prevalence, signs and symptoms, risk factors (Figure 3 )
Diagnosis (D): differential diagnosis, laboratory findings, pathological findings, imaging, diagnostic procedures
Treatment (T): appropriate health care, general and surgical measures, activity, diet, patient education
Medications (M): drug or drugs of choice, contraindications, precautions, interactions, alternative drugs or therapies
Follow-up (F): monitoring, prevention, complications, prognosis
Miscellaneous (M): associated conditions, age-related factors, pregnancy, ICD-9, notes, Internet references
Figure 3 5MCC Basics screen
One of the main advantages of the handheld version of this popular textbook is the instant accessibility of critical medical information any time, any place. Unlike some other reference tools, Skyscape provides an icon for each textbook on the PDA screen, so opening 5MCC takes only one tap, not two or four. As a leader in providing extensive medical titles for handheld devices, Skyscape has created an easy-to-use interface. The ability to link to some of their other reference titles enables health care professionals to move back and forth efficiently from the 5MCC to the Drug Guide for Physicians to Drug Interaction Facts at the tap of the stylus.
Due to the memory required to run this software, it might be necessary to update PDA hardware to a version with an expansion memory card. On the other hand, the added flexibility of an expansion memory card will enable users to load additional programs and resources.
When seconds count, PDAs are becoming essential tools for health care professionals to help them access quality information at the point of care. The handheld version of the 5MCC is a well-organized, up-to-date application that should be considered for the general practitioner's electronic black bag of the twenty-first century.