Unbound Medicine

Unbound Medicine (UM) is another recent player in the field of medical mobile technology and offers bundled collections of high-quality medical resources in a single package. This single package solution is a more comprehensive and cost-effective option to the myriad of individual mobile medical resources that are currently available.

UM is available through an institutional or a personal subscription. There are more than 30 individual titles from which to subscribe, depending upon area of interest, and subscription price varies based on titles selected. The strength of this product is the ability to support a variety of mobile or smartphone platforms, including Android, Blackberry, Apple IOS, Windows Phone, and the Internet. Medical information can be delivered at a time and place convenient to users based on their personal mobile device preferences. For all mobile devices, a wireless Internet connection is required. This reviewer tested UM using the iPhone IOS3 on a 3G network and downloaded it via the iTunes Store. The whole process, including installation, took approximately 5 minutes. However, users should be aware that the more content one subscribes to, the more significant the download delay. The total personal digital assistant (PDA) memory required for the entire UM collection is 8MB.

This review covers only these bundled items:

• A to Z Drug Facts: Users can search through approximately 4,000 drug topics. Drugs can be searched either by alphabetical (generic or brand) names or by therapeutic outcomes.

• 5-Minute Clinical Consult: The most helpful feature for quickly diagnosing a potential medical condition is the algorithm diagram. Algorithms quickly narrow down medical symptoms through easy-to-view flowchart diagrams. This reviewer expected more than the approximately 900 index topics. The image collection is also helpful as all images are in vivid color detail and could aid in diagnosis scenarios.

• Drug Interaction Facts: This is an advantageous tool to cross-check possible negative interactions with other drugs or food.

• MEDLINE Journals: This section lists only four journals: American Family Physician, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Viewing full-text articles depends upon library affiliation and subscriptions.

• Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests: Approximately 350 common medical lab tests are listed. Each lab test review contains details about collecting, processing, and analyzing or interpreting results.

UM is aimed at busy health care practitioners who need clinical information at their fingertips. UM describes itself as “changing the way healthcare professionals answer clinical questions by architecting content and delivering it to mobile devices and the web” [1]. Medical and nursing students and residents would benefit the most from UM.

UM is easy to interact with. The information is highly portable and offers the advantage of being used on various mobile platforms. Health care practitioners use many types of mobile devices in a variety of settings. UM converts this seemingly chaotic scenario to their advantage by supporting multiple platforms.

This database is a step in the right direction and offers a solution to help solidify many independent medical resources into one application. One could definitely see UM's value and usefulness as a tool that delivers concise point-of-care clinical information on a mobile platform.