ePocrates Introduces Mobile Clinical Reference Suite

Posted By: Ryan Monday, August 2, 2004 4:49:16 PM

ePocrates has introduced the ePocrates Essentials integrated suite of industry-leading clinical reference applications, featuring the brand new ePocrates Lab reference and the latest versions of the ePocrates Rx Pro and ePocrates Dx references. The ePocrates Essentials system includes all of the key decision support applications -- drugs, diseases, and diagnostics -- required for today's health care professional, all seamlessly integrated at the point-of-care.

Already, over 350,000 physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other health care professionals, including over 20 percent of U.S. physicians, subscribe to ePocrates applications. The applications provide unparalleled ease-of-use and up-to-date, trusted content which improves patient care and safety, and results in greater efficiency. Now delivery of care will be further enhanced through the ePocrates Lab diagnostic reference with information on hundreds of tests, including collection, interpretation and next steps. From the lab information, caregivers can easily tap on the ePocrates Dx tab to learn about diseases that may cause abnormal results or turn to the ePocrates Rx monographs to learn more about the drugs that might cause an abnormal result.

"The ePocrates Essentials suite does for the clinician what Microsoft Office did for the office worker -- providing the applications needed most in an integrated suite," said Kirk Loevner, ePocrates CEO. "All of the ePocrates applications are authored from the ground up, specifically designed for mobile devices."

"In today's fast-paced, complex medical environment, clinicians need diagnostic information at their fingertips. The ePocrates Lab reference was specifically developed by practicing physicians to help PDA users interpret test results," said Robert A. Baldor, MD, FAAFP, Professor of Family Medicine & Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Senior Managing Editor for the development of the ePocrates Lab reference. "A test description, with references for cost, CPT billing codes, normal values and collection guidelines gives a quick overview. Abnormal results are explained and suggestions for the 'next steps' to take in clarifying the diagnosis are only a click away! In addition to practicing clinicians this will be an invaluable reference for nurses, medical students and residents."

The ePocrates Rx Pro drug reference includes over 3,000 monographs including adult and pediatric dosing, contraindications and cautions and adverse reactions; an alternative medicine guide covering over 400 herbals; the MultiCheck(R) function capable of checking up to 30 drugs simultaneously for interactions; health plan formulary coverage and retail prices; the ePocrates ID(R) infectious disease treatment guide; and built-in dosing and medical math calculators.

The ePocrates Dx comprehensive medical diagnostic and therapeutic reference is based on respected content from the editor of 5-Minute Clinical Consult and features over 1,200 conditions and diagnoses described in extensive detail, quick treatment reminders, signs and symptoms, differential diagnoses, medications, and more.

The ePocrates Lab reference covers hundreds of diagnostic tests and panels including information on collection, preparation and cautions; pricing and Medicare reimbursement; and interpretation (disease, drug and spurious causes) and follow-up guidelines.

The ePocrates Essentials suite is available for download, as either an annual or two-year, low cost subscription compatible with handheld devices using the Palm OS and synchronizing to a Windows PC.

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Is this an ad?

kflowe @ 8/3/2004 5:48:46 AM #

Sounds suspicious to me. ePocrates is on my PDA, but it's the free version. The expensive version is more expensive and less feature-laden than much of the competition. I use PEPID extensively, and find it well worth the price. It has the same "suite" philosophy without the new-way-to-spend-money-every-month philosophy that ePocrates has.

Atari Portfolio > HP100lx > HP200lx > Palm IIIc > Palm 515 > Palm T|T3 > back to something that works like it should

RE: Is this an ad?

Manicorp @ 8/3/2004 1:48:59 PM #

I have not used epocrates for a long time and i've never used PEPID, so I tried the trial version this morning with PEPID. 'm not sure if I can say either program is superior over the other. I used to use epocrates when it first came out and it was great, but it did not have enough pediatric dosing available at the time so I moved away from epocrates and moved on to Tarascon Pharmacoepia. Currently I pay yearly payment of approx $30 dollars for updated drug list from Tarascon. It is a quick little program that does what it suppose to do very efficiently. You don't have to press lot of buttons and the info I want is quickly found. However, it doesn't have all the other features found in both epocrates and PEPID. I'm intrigued with epocrates' combination of 5MCC and epocrates ID and calculator. Again, I'll be more happy with 5MPCC.
I'm gonna try the new epocrates next but I wasn't too impressed with PDPID's "suite" either. For $60+ subscription per year I'd rather stick with one time pay for suite of programs from Handheldmed and minimal yearly subscripton to Tarascon pharmacoepia. IMHO.

Sam

RE: Is this an ad?

dsm363 @ 8/3/2004 11:27:16 PM #

Why the lac of Mac support? How much do they need to put into development to get something like this to work? I mean they have ePocrates Pro for the Mac so it's not like they aren't able to do it. Thanks.

RE: Is this an ad?

dsm363 @ 8/3/2004 11:29:29 PM #

Can't spell, oh well. What's PEPID? Never heard of it.

RE: Is this an ad?

kflowe @ 8/4/2004 6:20:30 AM #

PEPID has been around for about a decade -- I first saw it running on an HP-100lx back in the early/mid 90s. It used to stand for "Portable Emergency Physician Information Database", but they've changed it to be more inclusive. It was designed for use in the ED as a quickie refresher on a bunch of uncommon topics. Since then, it's grown substantially. It would qualify as a "textbook" by any definition I know. I use it more than ePocrates (free edition), 5MCC, and every other medical program I have.

I don't work for the company (or even know anyone there), and I buy it at market rate. I just like it a lot.

http://www.pepid.com/

Ken

Atari Portfolio > HP100lx > HP200lx > Palm IIIc > Palm 515 > Palm T|T3 > back to something that works like it should

RE: Is this an ad?

Nursedad @ 8/4/2004 9:11:36 PM #

Epocrates has very poor Mac support. Although the Pro version says that it will work with a Mac, I haven't been able to update the Epocrates database via hotsync for quite some time now. After reading this thread, I checked out Pepid...which seems to work fine with a Mac.

- - Jeff

RE: Is this an ad?

dsm363 @ 8/8/2004 10:51:23 AM #

I e-mailed both Mark Space (Missing Sync developer) and ePocrates and they both say there are looking into ways of working with eachother. Here is what ePocrates said
"At this time, Essentials does not support Palm/Mac or Pocket PC. It is our intention to release Essentials for these platforms in the near future. This should be by year end.
Essentials is much larger than Rx Pro. Rx Pro is only about 3 MB, whereas Essentials is about 6.3 MB. There appears to be a problem with the way the Palm Desktop software handles the large PRC files that get sent from our servers during an AutoUpdate to a Mac. The Windows version of the Palm Desktop does not seem to have too much of a problem with these large files. It's something our engineers are still working on.

Missing Sync is something that engineering will be looking into, as Palm will not support OS 6 on Mac. We will have to find another way to support our Mac users at that point."

Epocrates Rx FREE = BLOATED-WARE!!

gfunkmagic @ 8/9/2004 5:41:26 PM #

While the Rx version may still be free, it's absolutely annoying that it still installs the inactivated versions of RXpro, DX, Labs, tables etc onto your palm!! :( So, if you don't want to subsribe, it still takes up and wastes almost 2 MB of space in ram for the unused components and you have to go into Ram and manually figure out which files aren't needed and which to install!! That is absolute PITA IMO!! Epocrates needs to give subscribers the option to install individual components of the software and not install forecefully install components which they do NOT want! Of course I understand Epocrates Rx is free, but this just smacks of bad CS imho...

I support http://Tapland.com/

--------------------
GNM

RE: Epocrates Rx FREE = BLOATED-WARE!!

kflowe @ 8/11/2004 2:19:41 AM #

So, just what can I delete and still use the free version? The only file I have that looks like ePocrates is "ePocrates Rx" at 2814K (looking via the Palm's Info command). Is there a better utility to use, similar to FilEz (which crashed on my T3 so I deleted it).
Ken

Atari Portfolio > HP100lx > HP200lx > Palm IIIc > Palm 515 > Palm T|T3 > back to something that works like it should