New Wireless Resource for Medical Professionals

Unbound Medicine has introduced a new wireless medical resource for physicians and other healthcare professionals. In partnership with Merck & Co., Inc., Unbound Medicine now gives clinicians 24- hour access to select medical information from the MerckMedicus internet site using their wireless PDA or smartphone.

Using Unbound Medicine's powerful mobile platform, current medical resources can be accessed using a wireless internet connection to merckmedicus.com, including: The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, MEDLINE Journal abstracts, Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests, and Reuters Medical News. The Personal Search Assistant allows clinicians to query more than 11 million medical articles in the MEDLINE database from their handheld or wireless device in real-time without access fees or advertising content.

"We are pleased to extend our partnership with Merck to deliver trusted medical information to the point of need," said William Detmer, MD, president and CEO of Unbound Medicine. "As physicians are constantly on the go during the average day, the new wireless MerckMedicus will help them find answers when questions arise and stay abreast of the latest advances in medicine."

The wireless option is compatible with cellular phones with web-browsing capabilities, smartphones, and other wireless devices that use Pocket PC, Blackberry, or Palm OS operating systems. It follows the launch of Mobile MerckMedicus, which was designed for non-wireless PDAs and introduced by Unbound Medicine and Merck in 2004

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What about the patient?

e_tellurian @ 3/23/2005 8:30:30 PM # Q
Some have been sharing thoughts for years accumulating great equity and interest.

Who pays the bills? Who gives wealth to an industry every time we get sick and when we work?

When will a patient have a choice to securely and efficiently just walk in touch their wallet and exchange information and value built and tested right here in North America?

Health care will kill the patient if we do not understand that it is the living too, the patient, that creates value while still alive and thinking.

How will you choose to pay for your health care future choices?

Some are working to share wealth with healthcare too.

Just some thoughts.

E-T

e-tellurian

completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution

RE: What about the patient?
RhinoSteve @ 3/24/2005 12:30:17 PM # Q
I am very wary of anyone that advocates "sharing wealth" when they themselves are incompetant of making wealth for themselves. However, I do agree that anything that is in a patient file should never be kept from the patient themselves.

All of this digitizing of medical data has met hard resistance from the medical establishment mostly since the doctors themselves. MDs are not intersted in an attorney anywhere in the world accessing patient data from a public web site to see if they can make a case for malpractice suite.

How do you fix healthcare? The answer is pretty simple, let it be a real free market.

* Limit liability of doctors actions.

* Cancel goverment assisted healthcare in all forms. Once those subsidies go away, they healthcare market will be bigger for services and prices will go down.

* Regulate health care into a limited non-profit industry that promotes alternative and holistic methods that have been around long before the Industrial Revolution.

* Create tax penalties for being sick and not working. Thus, being healthy is profitable and "sick days" are no longer long weekends and vacations.

* Most of all, put "mental health" services under the same market scruty as other industries and look for results. Imagine having a care broken and your mechanic wants to put more time into you accepting the problem instead of fixing the care. I think you get the idea.

Socializing medicine as has been shown in other countries just screws up the problem even more.


RE: What about the patient?
ChiA @ 3/24/2005 2:07:36 PM # Q
>> How do you fix healthcare? The answer is pretty simple, let it be a real free market. <<

> > Regulate health care into a limited non-profit industry < <

Two sentences in the same comment which contradict each other!

RE: What about the patient?
e_tellurian @ 3/24/2005 4:46:38 PM # Q
What is your understanding of how knowledge is created? What is your knowledge of how knowledge is shared with others from an institutional perspective? What offers the institutions funded by those that also risk creating people driven knowledge value?

The healthcare system need/wants sick people to make a living and a purpose. They also need healthy people with some thoughts to create knowledge when healthy to share tax revenue. If everyone is sick that is a windfall for healthcare and a disaster for those that earn a living creating new knowledge to share. Some have suggested a win-win solution that will inhibit the transfer of ill health via contaminated currency. Offering solution here is good for the patient and good for those that value knowledge in its many forms.

Innovation is possible as a consequence of enough people choosing democracy. Democracy allows people to create knowledge for all to share. Patients die when people (Drs) leave as a consequence of an increase cost of living that their income can no longer sustain. In other words the system cannot afford its choices. What knowledge could we create that we could share, not for free as Dr do not work for free, that can offer people driven choices to help pay for your industry? A vibrant economy offers many choices as a consequence of a productive group of folks that share their wealth (taxes, dividends, interest) just a few features of a democracy.

Some nations need healthcare more than advanced technology and some nations need advanced technology to help pay for advanced healthcare. Perhaps with all this knowledge we could find a solution so we may all have healthy choices.

Any healthy thoughts for the patient too?

E-T

e-tellurian

completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution

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Commenting on the Story Itself

ChiA @ 3/24/2005 3:08:05 PM # Q
It's nice to be able to access what is potentially up to date info at the patient's bedside rather than having to trek back to a computer or the bookshelf, this is particularly true for the Guide to Diagnostic Tests.

Access to MEDLINE via the Wireless link, whilst unlikely to be of immediate direct benefit to the patient, will nevertheless aid the clinician in keeping abreast of new publications in the biomedical sciences. Again, rather than having to be next to a computer, the clinician can look at what's new during a meeting with colleagues, on the way to or from work, etc.

I'll be wary of using it via a Treo and a mobile carrier; the data you get back has the potential for a large mobile bill! Definitely one to use via Wi-Fi but it's nice to know the option's there to use it on a Treo when out and about.

RE: Commenting on the Story Itself
e_tellurian @ 3/24/2005 5:10:25 PM # Q
Agree.

Now how do you see interacting with technology with advanced choices driven by the patient?

Without down sizing or affecting quality?

E-T

e-tellurian

completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution

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