Skyscape – Fully Integrated Point-of-Care Software

Handheld computer and smartphone use by medical professionals continues to rise – some reports suggest 50% of physicians now carry such a device. The question that often arises is how to make the devices truly productive, which is why I’ll be dedicating week-two of my reviews to more great medical software and my Treo’s new best friend.
One company, Skyscape, Inc. was born in 1995 as a collaborative effort between physicians, Harvard Medical School, Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Mass General, and a pioneering software engineer. The goal was to make critical medical information portable (without the Harvard arrogance). Relatively new at the time, the Apple Newton provided the ideal platform for serving up point-of-care information. The result was an instant hit with the first clinical team to use the product.
The Newton is now ancient history, but Skyscape and the breadth of tools it provides have led the market over the past 10 years.
Patented technology – smARTlink™ – forms the cornerstone of Skyscape’s library of integrated support tools. Unique in the industry, smARTlink creates a kind of “fuzzy logic” which links all Skyscape products installed on the same device. Building on the functionality of smARTlink the company offers specially priced product bundles referred to as “Constellations”, which target specific areas of specialty – Cardiology, Emergency Medicine, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Nursing, etc. Skyscape’s strategic partnerships with industry-leading medical publishers and professional associations makes it possible for the company to offer the most respected, widely-used medical references—without the financial cost expected with such a bold claim! More than 300 general and specialty medical titles are now part of the integrated library, covering 30+ specialties. Titles are available from the American College of Physicians, American Society of Health Pharmacists, American Psychiatric Publishing Inc, Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, Elsevier, McGraw Hill, and many other leading publishers.
Using smARTlink, medical professionals can link from a clinical consult guide to a drug guide, to a drug interaction book, to a dosing calculator with very few clicks, all the while staying in the same topic. In addition, Skyscape makes it easy for medical professionals to dynamically access late breaking medical information such as drug and disease alerts, information from drug weeklies and journal subscriptions.
To see how the Skyscape products work, visit www.skyscape.com. Free trial versions are available for all Skyscape products. Experience for yourself how Skyscape decision support tools help you make better informed clinical decisions.