I always wanted some "electronic paper" device that I could take notes on and hold all of the files I wanted at my fingertips ...
My parents gave me the Kindle DX as a birthday gift! It has "whispernet" dedicated wireless for simple bookdownloading/wikipedia browsing (battery life 2 days) and a solid read time of 2 weeks with the internet disabled. Since it doesn't have a backlight and it only draws power when the pages turn, it's a great device for travel.
It feels almost blasphemous to admit how I am fond of my iPhone, especially now that the iPad has come out as the sexy attractive alternative to this eReader. Amazon will hopefully step up its game and work harder with the Kindle. In any case, I think that the Kindle was/IS still a good buy.
For my MD preparations, I bought a series of clinical books:
Hopefully this will pay off in spades over the next 3-4 years during my residency!
Then, I uploaded the AFP pdf series on assorted Family Medicine topics (we received a CD with copies of some important articles published in the past 10 years in our third year rotation.)
Additionally, I have been tossing in pdfs along the way, for ICU topics mainly.
There are tons of free e-books to read as well. I've read half of the Sherlock Holmes books and I'm attempting to read the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Physics for Entertainment now.
I put it in a clipboard I bought at Office Depot -- one of those storage clipboard cases -- for protection from damage/theft. I am working on making a USB drive with the PortableApps to create my perfect portable experience now, to use while rounding in the hospital.
I do enjoy the multiple formats that I can use to read my Kindle books -- it is nice to curl up in bed with my Kindle app on the iPhone when I don't want to read with the lights on.
The only thing I dislike about the Kindle is the bookmarking -- there's no way to label the bookmarks so it is a lot of page number memorization! Very frustrating when you're trying to navigate to something specific as a quick reference.
On my interview trail, I purchased this book for my Kindle DX -- and boy, am I glad that I got it electronically, since it clocks in at 960 pages and nearly 3 pounds in the hardcover edition!
It is a work of Science Fiction in the classic sense, inventing a whole world of "compossibility." A world where concents (monasteries) outlive surrounding civilizations by millenia, watching them rise and fall. The Avout (monks) revere Science, Reason, Logic and Physics instead of religion. Indeed, orders of the avout are called "maths." They strive to preserve the world's knowledge and seek out new discoveries, even though a Saunt (Saint) Lora of the 16th century proposed that all possible ideas had already been thought of, which includes Saunt Lora's own Proposition as well.
Stephenson dreamed up this world after participating in the 10,000 Year Clock of the Long Now project, where he thought of the idea of a church that had a clock with a set of individual gates, each programmed to open only at a set time: everyday, every year, every decade, every century and every millenia. A group of monks tended to the clock and were cloistered until such time that their specific gates opened.
The story follows a young "Tenner" who was collected at age 9 and finds himself released back out into the Saecular world shortly after completing his ten-year term. World-altering events call upon young Fraa Erasmus and his fellow clock-winders to solve a great mystery and save Arbre.
Stephenson definitely does not cut you any slack in the novel as you are introduced to the "Orth" language of the people Arbre on the first page and he never lets up. Slowly, the definitions for all of these words unfold in the novel. The payoff is rich in the form of contemplative prose in classic Plato and Socrates style dialoging that encompasses the physics of geometric coordinate phase space, the philosophy of consciousness, the existence/non-existence of time, the power of observation, and the exciting possibilities of science fiction (yes, there are parts of the book that include classic sci-fi space-opera elements to make geeks and nerds glomph and squeal and huggle and hurr.)
If you enjoy xkcd comics, Snow Crash, His Dark Materials, or anything along this vein where education itself is a form of entertainment for you, then this book is a definite buy.
It is quite a struggle for me to describe how this book has affected me, save to say that I have some upsight into the possible tracings of my own Narrative along multiple Worldtracks as they progress along a Directed Acyclic Graph in a Wick fashion, leaking in from the Hylean Theoric World. Complete nonsense to most, but I could put it best in no other way.
This part was a real struggle for me, since I have never used podcasts before. I didn't even use iTunes before. After a lot of searching, I came across some fun podcasts.
My blogging has dropped off, due to some new distractions. I thought I'd share one of them, since it bears medical/educational relevance, in the same vein as Joshua Schwimmer of Efficient MD.com:
Medscape loads faster than Epocrates, but Epocrates is the go-to for medicine info. Medcalc is a classic that I used a lot on my PDA, just like Eponyms. Heme Calc also has formulas for nephrology, cardiology, gastroenterology and obstetrics -- I couldn't tell the difference between the other apps offered (so I went with the one with the prettiest color.) Reach MD radio has streaming radio for medical professionals. Really good for a smattering of general medical topics. PubMed on Tap: Joel Topf found this very helpful when he needed a citation to back up the statement he made that "the data doesn't support the common sense notion that contrast accelerates the loss of residual renal function." Shots online and NEJM Image Challenge are two weblinks that I found worthwhile storing on my homepage.
Evernote is ever AWESOME. Especially when I found out that I could *Favorite* my handout on Acid-Base and EKG reading for quick access (local file, no repeat downloading necessary) Google Reader and Twitter provide me with round-the-clock streaming data on the latest and greatest, by subscribing to some of the best, web-savvy, provocative and brilliant physicians!
Dr. Natalie Hodge is the "first iPhone doctor" for pediatrics. She is going back to the basics of primary care by doing what a lot of doctors no longer can afford by reducing her overhead, moving out of the office and into your home.
“We intend to be an entirely mobile platform –there is no need for an office, at least for pediatricians,” Hodge said. “I have found that everything I need for my practice could fit in the trunk of my car,” Hodge told mobihealthnews in a recent interview.
“Some would call Personal Pediatrics a ‘concierge medical practice,’ but I prefer to call it a direct medical practice,” Hodge explained,”because we’re connecting patients who want house calls to physicians who want to make them.”
I love this idea. It is the Ideal Micro-Practice... just you and your doctor. There are many situations where such a model will breakdown, but it does reduce the barriers to care that so many people complain about. No more long wait times at the office. No more late appointments, made months after a phone call. No more problems calling up the doctor in the middle of the night when there's a problem. Best of all, no more 15 minute visits!
This is a small business model that ADAPTS to new technology. It UTILIZES resources so much more effectively to care for patients without any clunky outdated systems. (Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of paper charts over electronic medical records in terms of access and organization. However, EMRs as they stand today are terrible because they are designed with ancillary personnel in mind instead of physicians. As a result, hospital "chart review" becomes an exercise in "Where's Waldo" searching for the single line on a page of text that has been altered from the "Copy Note" function by nurses and docs alike.)
I am not sure where I fit into this picture, but I know I would like to practice in a similarly independent and free manner.
However, I also would like to care for a population of the lower socioeconomic status... and that is where the Concierge model fails. How can patients on medicare afford a subscription with a retainer fee for a personal physician? Especially (from their perspective) when it is "cheaper" to go to the Emergency Room for care?
Hmm. Questions that need answers. Someday, I hope to provide a solution that makes me happy.
For now, Drs. Jay Parkinson in NY and Natalie Hodge in CA(?) have their solutions that they hope to spread. Good luck to you both!
Jay Parkinson at Pop!Tech talking about Hello Health.
He created a new kind of medical practice on September 24, 2007 summarized by: 1. Patients would visit his website. 2. See his Google Calendar. 3. Schedule an appointment online and provide a chief complaint. 4. His iPhone would tell him. 5. He’d do a house call. 6. and get paid via PayPal!
On another note, I heard this story on NPR and I knew that I had to look it up when I got home. How did I find it? Well, I typed in "british vidding NPR" into Google. That's when I realized that Google Search is just like assembling a differential diagnosis -- coming across exactly the thing you're looking for (an answer) by a unique combination of findings. More on this later.
Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are quite common in the elderly, given their longer lists of illnesses and medicationsl in combination with failing kidneys and livers. ADRs are the 4th leading cause of death ahead of pulmonary disease, diabetes, AIDS, pneumonia, accidents and automobile deaths!
Yet a significant portion of reported "side effects" are confounded by other factors -- patients taking medications are sick and they can worsen in certain ways regardless of medications taken.
The U.S. errs on the safe side and reports all known and reported side-effects on the information packet that comes with drugs. These are intimidating and long lists. How are patients and future clinicians (such as myself) supposed to know which are the important side effects to watch out for among the long list of "CYA (cover your anus) reporting/disclosure"?
I propose that all adverse drug reactions and allergies should be in a "tag cloud," the way webpages are tagged with various categories. The most common reactions will grow in font size relative to their frequency. The most cited reactions in journal articles, relative to their danger AND frequency will also grow in size.
This will be a great way to visually assess the important reactions related to a particular drug! Maybe someday, drug interactions will be seen by associating two tag clouds together and noting the strengthened connections.
I loved playing the demo version of this game and now the deluxe version is available! :) Check it out... here's a Crayon Physics review that Petri Purho, designer, really liked:
Now, my live-in boytoy Zach is an artist. He keeps plenty of scribbleware around the apartment - including crayons. Truth be told, he loves crayons. And he loved Crayon Physics Deluxe. In no time he was sketching - wait, do you sketch with crayons? - no, he was doodling fantastic monstrosities and elaborate Rube Goldberg devices. The virtual reality of it had him hooked. I’ve long been suspicious of cuteplay, where a precise blend of childishness and verisimilitude charm the player beyond argument. The outside world thinks games are an apocalypse of blood and bare breasts, and yet grown gamers want nothing more than teddy bears, baby schema, and the same damn Mario system after system after system.
The lesson here is that kids understand what crayons are all about. I foresee an entirely new gaming industry that will be based off of this idea.
Think about this if you will: kids love to grab a crayon and just go wild on a piece of paper. Purho has created a game that is interactive and teaches kids about physics and problem solving along the way! I'd love to give this to a lil one and see what sort of magic happens...
This is a list that one of my professors sent us. I've trimmed it down a bit to the things that I recognize and use (or will use, based on her recommendations.) I'm guessing it's very similar to my other list that I've posted previously.
http://eponyms.net/eponyms.htm - List of 1,500 common and obscure medical eponyms (e.g., Rovsing's sign, Virchow's node) with descriptions. Free! Excellent program.
http://www.isilo.com/index.htm - iSilo document reader...many free medically related documents that you can use via iSilo. Partial reader is free. Full version costs $19.99 (Most platforms supported). I bought this and I use it from time to time... I don't really like the interface, but it is a nice reader for all of the www.meistermed.com files.
http://www.meistermed.com/ - A number of different clinical reference programs. Most are FREE but some have a small fee. You need iSilo for most of these programs. The site also includes depot of many medical iSilo applications. (Pocket PC, Palm OS) - Procedure series: steps for different surgical procedures (FREE) - Quick tools: small, focused references summarizing a current practice guideline, journal article, or point-of-care tool. (e.g. antibiotic prophylaxis, topical steroids) (FREE if you are on mailing list) - STD tools: Treatment guidelines. (Free trial version, $5.95 for full version) - Dermmeister which includes more than 500 digital photos of 66 common skin disorders (FREE) - Understanding and interpreting Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring – (FREE) - Breastfeed – breastfeeding reference (FREE) - Splinting Manual – (FREE) - Papmeister – Includes screening recommendations, HPV testing, mgmt of abnormal smears, dx/tx of cervical cancer (FREE) - Lytemeister - good program for analyzing electrolyte abnormalities. Goes through causes, diagnostic work-up, treatments, etc. (FREE) - Asthmameister – Complete guide to the diagnosis and management of asthma (FREE) - Lipids by FPPalm.com – Guide to the management of Hypercholesterolemia (FREE)
http://books.mcgraw-hill.com/medical/diagnosaurus/index.html - Diagnosaurus...a FREE ddx tool with 1000+ diagnoses (Palm, Pocket PC) Fun to use in the first and second year, but it's not as helpful in the third year (unless you're working on a presentation re: ddx considerations.)
www.kidometer.com - Kidometer gives a wide-range of pediatric tools.(Palm OS devices only). Free trial then pay to use. ($17.95) A highly recommended resource. I'll probably download this during my peds block and use up my free trial then. :)
http://www.medicaltoolbox.com/ - OB/GYN Stat tracker (collect delivery and surgery information) and Preg Calc Pro. (calculate due dates). Register for FREE use.
www.immunizationed.org - Shots 2008, ACIP immunization schedule from STFM with lots of vaccine information – FREE (Pocket PC, Palm) NO BRAINER. Get this and update it every year! :)
www.tarascon.com – Tarascon pharmacopoeia for PDAs. Purchase for $39.95/yr.
www.acponline.org/pda/clinical_references.htm - FREE downloadable clinical references from the ACP. You will need some type of reading program (Palmreader, Tealdoc, etc.) to access them. - Clinical guidelines- Medical Care of the Pregnant Patient- Drug Prescribing in Renal Failure- Domestic Violence Intervention Tool- Commonly used ICD-9 codes- Gynecology Alerts- Calorie Savings Food List- Normal Lab Values from MKSAP12- Vaccine Specific Information- JNC VI Hypertension Management- USPSTF guidelines- Many more… http://pda.ahrq.gov/index.html - AHRQ PDA downloads – Interactive Preventive Services Selector and Pneumonia Severity Index Module. Free downloads. http://cim.usuhs.mil/pubmed/PubMedClinQuery_pda.html - Pubmed site where you can add it to your avantgo channel list to do medical literature inquiries at the point of care. (FREE)
Websites with freeware and shareware for download – some are predominantly medical, others are general www.healthypalmpilot.com - extensive medical software links with user reviews http://www.freewarepalm.com/ - Extensive database of downloadable FREEWARE for your PDA. It has a medical category with some useful apps. http://www.palmspot.com/software/Medical/- a range of medical software http://pda.tucows.com/ http://www.palmgear.com/ - Many medical PDA programs available. Freeware/Shareware/Commercial. Can get another free patient tracker through this site “My Patients”
I stumbled across this Wired article a few days ago and I was stunned by the concept of the program SuperMemo. SuperMemo = Super Memory (not memorandum)
The concept is simple: make a series of flash cards either with questions or "cloze" statements. The program will randomize them and as you rank them based on a 6 point scale, it will reorganize them to determine (with some magical precision) WHEN you will forget this fact and it will prompt you with the flash card again at the EXACT time when you are about to forget it. Apparently this is the perfect time to relearn a fact and solidify it in your long term memory. In a lot of ways, I have been attempting to mimic this method(poorly) in my board review/study period and I wish that I learned about it earlier. It sounds like an excellent idea, even though the website is totally awful (and I assume the program is equally dense.)
I think that SuperMemo's website is very "90s" and hasn't been updated to a slick Web 2.0 edition because its Polish creator Piotr Wozniak is so focused on using SuperMemo that he puts everything at a lower priority. (The cost of dedicated brillance, I suppose.) I'd be inclined to use SuperMemo right now! if it had a better "how-to" manual, wiki-style.
Although it is too late for me to begin implementing this program for the purposes of board studying, I think I will buy it in June and play around with it to get it working for me for my third year clerkships. I agree with a lot of the fundamental .concepts that Wozniak shares on his website... hopefully I remember to blog about it in the future!
A side-liner to this is another program I found recently.
Wikidpad is is an outline note-taking program with a built in wiki-linking system. It can be exported to html for viewing on PDAs or online. However, I don't think it has the ability to allow you to edit the files on the Palm itself. Dunno if I'm going to implement this system... SuperMemo sounds much more engaging (and more time-consuming.) I'll keep you updated. via MedicalNerds.com
I'm not exactly an early-adopter when it comes to new technology. I don't like to spend a lot of money on the latest souped up laptop mobile phone, PDA or digital camera. I prefer something that is cheap and popular because it's familiar.
However, there's one situation where I'm all for the early-adoption. Google.
I remember the first day I was introduced to Google. It was back in high school, during my sophomore or junior year. Mind you, this was a time when search engines were horrible things to use; there was some clunky programming language you had to learn in order to pull up items from the internet to make it remotely useful. This was a time of Gopher and AltaVista and Yahoo. I was at my friend J's house (where we'd occasionally convene to have "LAN parties" and hook our computers together to play a game) and he said "hey, there's these people from stanford that are trying this new idea out for search." I liked the layout. It was clean and simple. It bugged me that they misspelled the word googol though... but it was a dream to use.
Since then, I've been keeping track of their progress into internet apps. I use Gmail and Google Reader as my main processing applications. I tried to convince my friends to use Google Docs with only some success. I heart the Google.
Google is free. Google is open. Google is creative. Google is friendly! Recently, I emailed Google Scholar the suggestion that they include PubMed IDs into their searches. Less than a day later, I got an email from one of the developers, thanking me for the idea! Cool beans. Google's motto is "do no evil"... which pleases me immensely that a company believes in something like the Hippocratic Oath.
Google's latest endeavor is Google Health., announced on the Official Google blog a few days ago. My local drugstore (Longs) is participating with Google as they prepare to debut the Personal Health Record later this year.
I'm very excited about this project. As people collect more and more of their lives (their e-information) online through photos, diaries and other such services, it makes sense to have something like their Health accessible as well. It's the ideal of Patient Autonomy -- a quick list of their medications, further resources for health topics they are interested in, a link to their family history, etc... all at their fingertips should the need arise. I can foresee a subset of very involved, very dedicated net-savvy people utilizing the PHR to great effect.
However, I've got a few questions.
Who has access to what? * Will doctors be the only ones who can modify the patient's list of medications? * Security problems are of special concern in this area. I already dread the idea of someone finding my username and password because they could hijack my gmail, my subscriptions, my blog... basically my entire internet life. What would happen if a hacker got ahold of my health as well?
To what degree will patients finesse their PHRs to sound good? I was surprised the first time I got ahold of my own medical records and found that 'patient denies smoking, drinking alcohol or using illicit drugs.' I'm not in denial! It's a language thing and the point remains. *Will patients lie about their diet, exercise and other lifestyle choices more or less with a PHR than with their own doctors?
Will this affect the quality of health information find through "google"? *Free medical information is not equivalent to trained medical judgment. I have access to the same free info that everyone else does (yay!), but I'm learning more and more everyday what it takes to be a clinician. It requires journal articles and guidelines and understanding of basic science and mechanisms of action... which are all found more easily through closed channels than the open ones.
Will people have better contact with and access to their doctors through the PHR?
Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google Inc. provides a few answers.
He starts off with great story how Google saves a man's life (he was having a heart attack, typed his symptoms into a search engine and the first hit said: you're having a heart attack. dial 911.")
PHRs have been done before. Google Health aims to integrate closed-systems and help them talk to each other. Standardization is currently lacking in fields like cell phone menus and health management systems.
You own your own PHR data and determine who has access. Transferring to a new doc? Boom. Privileges granted with a simple shift in privacy settings. Trust is important to Google.
Cloud-computing, server-side storage of important information means that your information will be accessible via any computer rather than just one hospital or one clinic.
A health advisory counsel was formed to advise Google on the services needed. Issues like organization, reliability and security, the same concerns that I have are mentioned.
Companies like Longs, Walgreens, and Walmart, as well as places like UCSF and Cleveland Clinic cooperated with Google through a series of ongoing projects to try and integrate Google Health into their services.
Go to ~30:40 to hear more about "Diana", the Cleveland Clinic patient. Her conditions page has a list of things that she added herself, as well as those she added in from her doctors. A safety check alerts her to a prescription of amoxicillin since she's allergic to penicillin. Health reference pages provide basic context on health conditions, illustrations, news, web searches, google scholar links and discussion groups. Diana can opt to "connect" her PHR to third-party programs. A google gadget can provide her with medication reminders to her google homepage(hey, maybe a text msg would be a better idea!)
A few other notions are entertained and illustrate Google Health's potential for offering even more services. They like the idea of a mother writing a vaccination checklist for her kids, news alerts on a Cure for their condition (which brought laughter to my lips in delight)
Q&A follows, bringing up questions on the success and long-term implementation of something like Google Health, Doctors being informed by Google Health, Monetization of Medical information, Open-vs-Closed models, Google EMR for billing and insurance, etc.
Wow.
Disclaimer! I know very well that I'm just promoting Google through viral advertising, but they've got some great ideas and I've always been a huge fan. I hope Google Health succeeds.... hey and maybe someday I could get hired as a consultant! hmmm?!? hehe.
My parents got me an early xmas present ... a new phone/PDA! I'm thrilled about it; it has a camera and email and all that jazz my original nokia block phone did not have. It also means new programs! I'm shopping aroung to find medical software for my Windows mobile and I noticed a lack of critical reviews on a lot of things. Reading reviews like "THX SO MUCH OMG" and "I love this program! Keep up the great work!" are nice and all... but very uninformative.
I thought I'd do my blogger duty and contribute my opinions to the all-powerful google cache.
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My first review is on my most-used program on my old PDA... Stedman28. It is the 28th edition of Stedman's dictionary and I purchased a cool combo of hardcover book, PDA software and accompanying spellchecker last year. I don't remember the price, but it was WELL-WORTH it. Just having the spellchecker makes you seem more intelligent; spelling out words like chondrocalcinosis or progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy with autocorrect is beautiful.
The nice thing about Stedman28 is the simplicity of use. Just write out the word and it flips through the index until it finds the one you're looking for! The definitions usually match up with those from the electronic Stedman's Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing 1.0... so the hardcover book had a few more details (and pictures!) of items not included in the e-version.
Now for the critique. Stedman28 takes too long to use. Here's the steps I have to go through to get my definitions: Since my 1 year subscription expired, I get a message that says:
"Stedman expiry status: your subscription expired on 06/27/2007. Please renew now for continued access to product updates and Skyscape support.
I have to click a red x to move through that alert message. I don't like the renewal model... when I buy a textbook, the first page I open up to doesn't say "sorry, you've owned this book for more than a year, please buy our new version"... why should it be any different with an e-book?!? I don't want my programs to harass me. Then I have to select the correct word list index. As you can see from the above graphic, the menu is split between the A-L and the M-Z list. If you are in the wrong index, i.e. searching for the word "neuron" in the A-L section, it chirps at you a bunch of times as it scrolls all the way to the end of "L." If I search for a word like "NANC neuron" or "motor neuron," it takes me to the broader definition of "neuron" and then I have to scroll down the list until I find the correct word. Sometimes this can take a long time because of the number of words clustered in the list.
I give this program an B+. I have never had any technical difficulties and the word list is impressive. There are a few eponyms that it misses, but those are easily caught by the Eponym program (review to come.)
I'm waiting for the day that they invent ePaper. I'd like to be able to take notes on something thats flexible and portable, something that I could read hundreds of books on with the flip of a page, that requires very little power, and it has wireless access to the internet.
I think that having a device like this would greatly improve my own speed and productivity and more importantly, it would be TOTALLY RAD. A lot of docs these days have palm pilots or Treo phones with mini keypads and stuff like that, but they are so tiny! I rarely use my palm pilot because it makes a highpitched electronic sound that gives me a headache.
My tutorial group was talking about our proposed electronic purchases yesterday. One girl was displeased with her old Treo. Someone else commented on about getting a tablet PC.
And then, I saw this today on Geekologie. Holy cow, this laptop is thinner than a penny is wide! It's almost as thin as the new Razr phones! And it uses flash memory (the same stuff that comes on jumpdrives and in digicams) so the battery life is >12 hours.
Whoa. I can't wait to buy this, jewelry and purse-looking straps be damned! It is a sweet device.
Geekologie, a website that I love to visit to see funky new gidgets, gazmos and kickawesome stuff, put up this picture of an X-Ray of a Kiss.
They must have coated their faces with contrast and then touched it up with Photoshop or something like that, because there's no way that a regular X-ray has that kind of resolution.
It's very pretty though... and maybe that's how Superman sees the world. Man, I wish I had X-ray eyes. Not only would I be able to see through female articles of clothing (abusing my powers for evil), but I would also be able to quickly diagnose pneumonia, osteoporosis, and ID broken bones (Yay for Good uses!)
This program allows you to freely link concepts together in a simple-to-use, free program with a lot of powerful features like synchronous editing (for maps hosted online,) suggestions (that offer linked-concepts from other maps) and an outline view (with a list of the concepts made, prepositions used and linking phrases.)
How is this useful for a med student? Here's a few maps that I've made last night using this program -- the little icons illustrate the ability to link resources to the map!
It is very useful for visualizing mechanisms and learning where your knowledge is deficient!
And you're wondering what sort of things you need for this venture. It can be overwhelming and there are a TON of resources that you'll be utilizing. You're strapped for cash and this whole school thing is already cutting into your future pay. So what do you do?
Some professors will have a recommended reading list -- they might even require some texts. There's only a few that I've been told are really required and those are the only ones you should really buy in your first year.
You might also be hearing about PDA software. You don't need to fork over a lot of money to get the portable info you need. There's a few programs that everyone I've talked to uses and I'll share them with you.
First, some reading lists: So you'd like to... know what books I bought for medical school Amazon.com So you'd like to... succeed in medical school Amazon.com Notice the overlap in books. A medical dictionary like Taber's or Stedman's comes with software. I bought the Stedman's with PDA software and I really like it. Since I'm pretty clueless at this stage in the game, it has been very helpful. Robbin's Pathologic Basis of Disease is a must buy. Some people recommended that I read through the 1st ten chapters of this big book by the end of the semester. Sure. That doesn't sound so bad, but it is dense reading. Perhaps "baby" Robbins (Basic Review of Pathology) would be better suited for this purpose. Lippincott's has a review of Biochemistry, Pharmacology and Microbiology. Biochem is the favored Lippincott's text; the other subjects have different books that suit different people. Clinical Microbio made ridiculously simple looks ridiculous alright. At first, I didn't really like the pictures, but they are starting to grow on me now. I already took microbio in college, so most of the concepts are not very helpful. There are a lot of fun mnemonics though!
Each school has their own curriculum. My Med School is geared by case-based studies of organ-systems, so the books that I have are mainly looking at differential diagnoses, rather than "basic" science subjects covered in the USMLE Step 1.
Epocrates Rx free is a drug reference program that also has a formulary based on local insurance policies so you can write the right prescriptions. Medical Mnemonics.com - Use this! It is a lot of fun... and I've already been posting up a few mnemonics from this program that I've found useful. Johns Hopkins Antibiotics Guide is an "Epocrates Rx" for Abx. MedCalc - I'm hoping I won't get in trouble by relying on this one too much in the future.
On a different note, I really like using McPhiling to switch quickly between my programs without going to Home first. It also has a cool pseudo "Alt-Tab" feature to flip back and forth between your current and previous program.
Well, I hope that has been helpful! If you have any other links or books to recommend, please feel free to comment.
Geekologie presents its tongue-in-cheek take on the development of robotic worms for delving into your gut. A team of European scientists are taking the idea of a "camera pill" to a whole new level by mobilizing it in a freakishly eerie way.
The team has already created a few prototypes (see videos here and here), and they are currently working on a robot with a camera and a light to capture video as it travels. Unfortunately (fortunately?) the robot is going to need years of testing because, as one researcher put it, "if something this complicated goes wrong, it could be very hard to get out." I don't know why they don't just add a drilling device to the front of the robot. That way, if something goes wrong, the robot could just drill its way to freedom and safety.
I don't think that it would be that difficult "to get out." It would get packed into a bolus if subjected to regular peristalsis and come out buried in a turd. Intestinal worms have developed specialized mouths that latch onto specific parts of our guts and swim upstream constantly to avoid being pushed out before they are ready to go. Still, there are other problems that need to be overcome...
Like the "Ick!" factor. I would not want a little robotic worm squirming around in my intestines... I feel that regular parasites are enough cause for worry, thank you very much. Looking at their designs thus far, it doesn't look like it would be neatly packaged like the camera pill. Would you want to have the used version, knowing that it has gone through someone else's GI system from bowl to hole?
Ponders the mysteries of the human body. Speaks words of near incomprehensibility. Geeks out on medblogs. Loves to listen to stories. Hopes to write stories as well.
I always wanted some "electronic paper" device that I could take notes on and hold all of the files I wanted at my fingertips ... 
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