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Information
Technology and Medicine
By Sekharjit Singh Sinam
The information technology revolution has pervaded every sphere of our life. Its impact on medical science and health care has been tremendous. Gone are the days when we had to rely solely on the print media and hand-search large volumes of reference texts and enormous bound back volumes of medical journals to get any sort of reliable information.
Electronic search for whatever information we need from e-libraries like the Cochrane library, databases like the Medicine from the National Library of Medicine, USA, Excerpta Medica, innumerable journals which can be accessed online is beginning to make it
much easier to get the information we need in a fraction of the time taken by the conventional methods, in a much neater format and undisputable relevance.
Where is the information: The general public, the so-called consumers, has also a vast amount of disease related and health related information available over the web. Such information is just a few clicks away from anybody who has access to the net. There are also
large ftp sites looming far and wide to be explored by those whose interest goes a little beyond the general enthusiasm of browsing the http sites.
Anybody who wants to know about a particular condition (a disease state or anomaly) can get the minutest details of the condition from the multiple sites, discussion forums, chat groups and communities. The
information that is available usually far exceeds the knowledge that a general medical person knows. There is no way of stopping of somebody from accessing as much of the information as he or she desires. The only drawback is that a layman may misinterpret the highly technical information that needs a lot of background knowledge, even for a professional, to understand properly. There are, therefore, sections of medical websites, which are meant to be used by the consumers
to the extent that even topic has a version with a much more user-friendly interface, meant for use by the others apart from the medical professionals. A good example of such a website is the raredisease.org which gives information on rare conditions that even a
medical man may not have proper knowledge about.
Healthcare facilities -an excellent site: It is not only disease conditions that one may get information but also on the facilities at particular institutes, hospitals and laboratories and help forum. The
Christian Medical College at Vellore is one of the most popular centers for treatment for the people of northeast. One could visit the official website http://www.vellorecmc.org/ to get both academic as well as service related information. Starting from the outpatient days of particular units and doctors to links for the patient information brochures, from courses offered to academic publications, and for the
matter anything that one may wish to know is waiting to be explored.
A premier institute sans a website: Sadly enough the premier medical institute AIIMS, Delhi does not have an official website worth its name. The website www.aiims.edu/ maintained by the computer facility
provides only a few superficial information on admissions to courses, lectures and conferences, electron microscope facility etc. The other websites are all alumni or student related.
Sites for the professionals: For the medical profession there are quite a few very useful websites. The most comprehensive is the www.mdexpress.com, which has links to almost all the fields of medicine. One can set up a customized desktop, which will
automatically deliver information of one's choice every time the site is visited. Other elegant sites are www.medchoice.com/, www.indmedica.com/, www.webmd.com/ through which one can get limitless
information on health and disease. It is now possible to submit articles online, for publications in the medical journals.
All that glitter is not gold: A word of caution to the unwary is not unjustified here. Some of the information offered on the web pages may be misleading and erroneous. One needs to consider the credibility
of the organization that put up the web page. When in doubt one has to study pages of similar nature or information provided on a different website.
Telemedicine and Telesurgery: Telemedicine has come into existence and is going to stay here. A physician can now consult, over the net, an authority or more experienced person for opinion, help and guidance on
complicated cases. It is now possible for a patient to transmit vital data of his body's functioning and other parameters so that the concerned physician can study the progress of the patient from a remote place and advise necessary changes in treatment.
Medical images obtained at a remote part of the world could be sent to a radiologist at a good centre for expert opinion. Experienced surgeons could assist and guide the less experienced based at a remote center
during surgical operations. This is particularly applicable at war fronts. These technologies require a broadband connection or Internet II A new wonder breed?
The Handhelds: A very significant advancement in IT is the development and widespread use of handhelds. Access to the vast resources that exist over the net, the www.ftp sites and specialized servers have so far been restricted by the necessity to sit in front of the ubiquitous microcomputers (PC's and Macs). The appearance of the laptops and notebooks did little to improve the situation apart from the business presentations and routine word processing. Handhelds have come in a big way in the last four years or so. The so-called PDAs (Personal Digital
Assistants) have improved immensely to the present connected organizer or the handheld computers; the most widely known and used of the last variety being the Palm Handhelds from 3 Com. The other notable brand is the Handspring Visor with room for expendability.
It was just a few years ago than a 32 KB or 68 KB digital diary was the status symbol and craze of the mobile executive. Now the most basic of handhelds have 2 M memory. The upper end handhelds have 8 M (being
the maximum memory that can be addressed by the Palm OS so far) with the Handspring Visors being upgradeable by the use of optional modules.
The most important distinguishing feature of a handheld from a notebook is not the convenient small size but the instantaneousness of access. A push of a button and a tap is all that is required to take you to your desired piece of information without having to wait for the interminable booting up process.
Apps for the handheld: The applications that run on the Palm OS are tiny and take up very little memory. It is only the data that they address which occupy any significant space in the limited memory of the handhelds. These wonder devices have innumerable applications the basic ones being the address book to keep track of contacts and their phone numbers. Memo pads to scribble notes, date books to enter appointments and remainders, calculators, to do lists, and expense tracking apps. One can also install spreadsheets, relational database programs, document readers, word processors, games and picture viewers, presentation programs, etc. The two apps that bring the handhelds at par with the desktops or notebooks are the Mail and AvantGo. The Mail is compatible with Outlook and AvantGo is a mini offline www browser. All the data in these apps can be synchronized with the ones that are on the desktop, at the touch of a button.
Palm apps on the net: Apps for the palm and compatibles are in such great abundance on the net for us to download these days. Almost every website worth its name has come up with a mobile version for the handheld. These are plenty of health related materials meant to be used on the handheld. Medical Encyclopedias and first aid e-books are the most useful for the laymen. Most of the programs are available for free. But some of them are commercial or shareware. It is a good idea to go and grab one of those amazing plastic cards called credit cards with international validity from one of the multinational banks to enable one to pay for the programs that one cannot just resist the temptation of using.
New unwritten regulation for medical schools: Most of the students at medical schools in the state have to carry around one of these handheld loaded with a Pharmacopoeia, a medical calculator, a dictionary, a few e-medical texts in modules, and use it to make notes, keep track of references, schedules of classes, and keep database and progress notes of patients. Most physicians cannot do without one of these handhelds loaded with c-reference books of similar nature and apps that allow keeping tack of patients, their progress, prescriptions etc. The two most useful apps are the pharmacopoeia and the medical calculator.
This is undeniable proof that the use of an e-pharmacopoeia on the handhelds has reduced drug interactions, adverse reactions and corneous doing very significantly. It has again been proved that it is humanly not possible for the doctors to remember all the medical formulas and the use of Medical Calculations has made calculations like the Apgar Score, Glasgow Conma Scale, Anion Gap, Creatinine Clearance just to name a few examples, very easy, fast and error-free.
Novel idea at high schools: Some schools (The Ballard High at Seattle being the first) have introduced palm and handspring handhelds and windows CE powered tiny computers for the students to make notes, keep schedules, track homework assignment, create outlines and write reports, share information and record their grades. They can also read novels and news, use an electronic dictionary and thesaurus and study for tests from e-texts with excellent search facilities.
These are dynamic classrooms that are embracing the technology. This, the educationists believe, will make the students develop strong organizational skills, improve academic achievement, and gain valuable proficiency with technology. What a good start for those aspiring to become physicians who would certainly be using such devices during their medical school careers and practice.
What awaits us here: For us in this region of the world the use of handhelds may be limited to the basic apps, reading e-books and articles relevant to one's profession, send and receive e-mail on the move with the use of a palm modem or WAP enabled cell phone, and download selected web pages for offline browsing.
The beauty of color and optionals: Some of the newer color capable handhelds have improved visibility and allows one to see photographs and run slide shows.
Optional attachments allow the handheld to be used as a digital camera, a cell phone, an MP3 player and every program it to animate a robot. Programs and data can be beamed easily from one handhelds to another via I-R ports.
The uses of these devices are limitless. I wonder how I could manage to survive without a handheld all these days. My life has changed for the better since I started using a handheld.
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