Epocrates Essentials

If you haven’t heard about Epocrates Essentials, you are definitely in the minority here. More than 500,000 medical professionals actively use Epocrates’ software. While you may think you know all about it, there have been some new developments, which make it worth giving this industry-standard software another look.
Epocrates Essentials provides a comprehensive resource for medical professionals on their mobile devices (Palm, PocketPC and newer devices including Treos). It goes well beyond loading medical textbooks on a mobile device. Essentials includes a full suite of offerings featuring all of the key decision support applications – drugs, diseases, and diagnostics – required for today’s healthcare professional. Epocrates Essentials includes the Epocrates Rx Pro® premium drug and formulary reference; the Epocrates SxDx™ disease diagnosis and treatment reference and symptom assessment tool; and the Epocrates Lab™ diagnostic reference designed to help users interpret test results.
Beyond clinical reference information, Epocrates also offers health plan formularies with copay, coverage and prior authorization information (including the only place to currently get Medicare D formulary information on the PDA), DocAlert® clinical messaging (relevant, timely clinical and specialty news from the FDA, CDC and other groups), and the MobileCME™ learning system for doctors on the go.
Recently, the company has also partnered with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Laboratory of Computer Science to bring its symptom assessment tool to a PDA with the introduction of Epocrates SxDx. What does this mean? Users now have access to intelligent decision support throughout the diagnosis process. Clinicians can enter an unlimited number of symptoms, examination findings, such as lab results, and key patient demographics, to generate a list of the plausible diagnoses in the Epocrates disease reference with 5-Minute Clinical Consult. They can weigh their search based on the prevalence and likelihood of patient symptoms and findings. A key differentiator of this product is the refine feature that allows users to select additional symptoms which narrow down the list of potential diseases and gives the option to view rare vs. commonly prevalent diseases based on the symptoms entered.
So give Epocrates a shot, we promise you that you’ll love your PDA just oh so much more!