Tiny Little Screens

Posted by Alison Aldrich on October 14th, 2008 Posted in: Technology

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This week: The National Library of Medicine’s products for handheld devices; how to test a PDA, Blackberry, or iPhone without owning one; and additional resources about mobile computing in healthcare.

NLM Mobile

The National Library of Medicine offers several information resources for use on handheld devices. These include:

PubMed for Handhelds
This is a special PubMed interface designed to display well on small screens. PubMed for Handhelds emphasizes search strategies appropriate for answering clinical questions. It includes a few search options that are not available through pubmed.gov. These options include PICO (patient, intervention, comparison, outcome) searching, the askMedline natural language search, and a search of case reports for symptom/disease associations.

WISER
WISER stands for Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders. It is designed to assist first responders in identifying hazardous substances and mitigating potential health effects. WISER can be used wirelessly or downloaded as a standalone application for use in the field.

Watch a recorded webcast of Maryanne Blake and Gail Kouame demonstrating WISER and other NLM resources for emergency responders.

AIDSinfo’s PDA Tools
Guidelines for HIV/AIDS treatment can be downloaded as PDFs for viewing on Palm® and Pocket PC® devices. A portable version of the HIV/AIDS Glossary is available for Palm® devices.

The complete list of NLM Mobile projects is available here.

Handheld Device Simulators:

You don’t need to own all the latest gadgets in order to see how they display web pages. Here is a PubMed citation, approximately as it would look on a Pocket PC:

This image was captured from a Pocket PC simulator at G-site.

Here is a substance summary on WebWISER as it would look on an iPhone:

This image was captured from the iPhone simulator at TestiPhone.com , which works best with Apple’s Safari browser.

Other, more specific simulators are available from device manufacturers such as BlackBerry.

Additional Resources:

“Computers, Handheld”[MeSH] – English language articles from PubMed

PDA and Smartphone Resources – links to buying guides, reviews, and software resources (maintained by Fordham Health Sciences Library, Wright State University)

The Palmdoc Chronicles – a blog about the latest medical PDA news

The Krafty Librarian bought an iPhone last weekend. Watch Krafty’s blog to learn what she discovers about library and medical applications for her new device.