Android users rejoice. If you are an UpToDate subscriber, you now can download the new UpToDate Android app.

Description
Find clinical answers at the point of care or anywhere you need them! Now you can access current, synthesized clinical information from UpToDate® — including evidence-based recommendations — quickly and easily on your AndroidTM phone or tablet. This app is free to download. However, an individual subscription is required to log in and use it.
Features of UpToDate include:
• Persistent login
• Easy Search with Auto-complete
• Bookmarks and History
• Mobile-optimized Calculators
• Ability to earn CME/CE/CPD credit

This is the first public release of the Android app for UpToDate. Like the first UpToDate iOS mobile app, you need to login and you need an Internet connection. It is more convenient to have a native app rather than access UpToDate from the browser and you get more options than just the browser version. I suppose eventually UpToDate will release an “UpToDate Complete” for Android much like the iOS UpToDate Complete.
Update: It seems that this first release, although a free app, is available only to those who have access to the Google Play store in North America.

UpToDate is a great reference source for pharmacists; actually all healthcare professionals. It was my favorite reference when I was still a real pharmacist. My browser always had a tab open to UpToDate.

Based on The Palmdoc Chronicles article I went in search of the Android version of UpToDate. Not easy to find at the UpToDate site. Fortunately it only took me a second to find it on Google Play.

Note: UpToDate requires a subscription to get to all the information.

From Google Play: Tarascon Prescriber’s Essentials

The Prescriber’s Essentials Android App is a combination of the award-winning Tarascon Pharmacopoeia and the Johns Hopkins POC-IT Center ABX Guide, now available for your Android device.

This must-have resource contains vital information on thousands of drugs and antimicrobials to help clinicians make better decisions at the point-of-care.

Prescriber’s Essentials Features Include:

• Convenient and quick portable access on your Android device
• Continuous drug updates for 12 months
• A fully integrated tool for multiple drug interaction checking
• 47 invaluable drug reference tables and 15 dynamic calculators
• Extensive pediatric drug dosing
• Anti-microbial agents
• Infectious diseases
• Commonly-encountered pathogens

You can find more information on Lexi-Drugs here.

The dialogue lead to a couple of important discoveries.

First, I had no idea what MedInforNow could do. I was only using a fraction of its functionality. The product is much more powerful than I initially thought, and to say that I wasn’t using it to its full potential is an understatement. The company actually scheduled a 15 minute one-on-one webinar session with me to highlight all the major features and “hidden gems”. Since then I’ve spent some time optimizing my MedInfoNow settings. I’d still like to have access to more full articles, but overall the information I’m getting has improved. Optimizing my preferences, journal settings and library access made a significant improvement in my overall experience. MedInfoNow has promised to put a “hidden gems” post on their blog (Doody’s Views) in the near future. I’ll let you know when it’s up.

Second, when I was rummaging around Doody’s Views I saw a neat little literature search box in the upper right hand corner (see image below). When you click on it you get a pop-up window that allows you to do a quick literature search without leaving the site. You can filter by journal and/or timeframe. Results are displayed a la Medline style with the option to click through to the abstracts. I thought it was pretty cool. I liked it so much that I did what any good red-blooded American would do: I stole it and put it on my site. Actually I asked them for permission to add it to my site and they graciously agreed (image below).

And there you have it, a quick update on my experience with MedInfoNow.

Clinical Reference Updates – January 2012 Summary for Medscape App for Android™

• 487 diseases & conditions updated
• 114 drug monographs updated
• 4 new drug monographs added

Featured Content of the Month – Heart Failure

This month we bring you an expanded collection of over 30 Heart Failure topics that have been updated with the most recent developments from medical literature and guideline recommendations from the American Heart Association, the New York Heart Association, and the European Society of Cardiology.

Comprehensive coverage on Heart Failure, including:

Heart Failure – includes the latest guidelines from the ACCF/AHA, NYHA, and ESC, as well as a greatly expanded multimedia library of clinical images and videos

Echocardiography – discusses the technical aspects of 2-D and Doppler echocardiography and provides an overview of equipment and patient preparation

Transvenous Cardiac Pacing - provides details on obtaining venous access, a technique for placement of the pacing lead, and complications that may occur

Permanent Pacemaker Insertion – offers information on devices and equipment, details on the implantation technique, and a discussion of technical considerations

New Drug Monographs

azilsartan/chlorthalidone (Edarbyclor)
New drug combination of an angiotensin II receptor blocker and thiazide-like diuretic indicated for treatment of hypertension.

glucarpidase (Voraxaze)
New carboxypeptidase enzyme indicated for toxic plasma methotrexate concentrations in patients with delayed methotrexate clearance due to impaired renal function.

Drug Monograph Updates

brentuximab (Adcetris)
A new black box warning was added that describes cases of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, a rare but serious brain infection that can result in death.

C1 inhibitor human (Berinert)
Expanded indication includes treatment of acute attacks for laryngeal hereditary angioedema.

pneumococcal vaccine 13-valent (Prevnar 13)
New indication for prevention of pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae in adults aged 50 years or older.

raltegravir (Isentress)
New pediatric indication for HIV-1 infection in children aged 2 years or older.

Fentanyl transmucosal (Subsys)
New sublingual spray indicated for breakthrough cancer pain.

Practice Changing Updates

Our app is continually being updated with new FDA drug approvals, the latest clinical updates from medical literature and current guidelines to help you stay informed and make the best decisions in the treatment of your patients. Here are this month’s featured updates:

Bacterial Pneumonia – Prevnar 13, a pneumococcal 13-valent conjugate vaccine, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for people aged 50 years and older to prevent pneumonia and invasive disease caused by the bacterium, Streptococcus pneumoniae.

Human Papillomavirus – The CDC now recommends the quadrivalent HPV vaccine (Gardasil) for routine use in boys aged 11 or 12 years. Current recommendations advise vaccination for males aged 13-21 years who have not been vaccinated previously or who have not completed the 3-dose series.

While looking at the table of contents from my favorite journals and reading through the abstracts has value, it falls short of providing the same level of information one gets from digging into an article, looking at the data, viewing the tables and graphs, etc.

In an attempt to improve my access to information I signed up for a service called MedInfoNow.

MedInfoNow touts itself as “A personalized weekly email that quickly summarizes the latest journal article abstracts and citations from Medline® important to you.”

MedInfoNow is easy to use. You simply select topics that interest you, the services searches through those topics, puts them into a simple summary and emails them to you once a week. The service provides obvious value by giving me access to several journals in a single location, but MedInfoNow definitely falls short of my expectations. I was already doing much of what the service provides via RSS feeds, Twitter and frequent visits to my favorite informational websites.

The one thing I really need is access to full-text articles. Unfortunately MedInfoNow doesn’t do that. While it does provide links to some full-text articles, those articles are freely available to anyone and don’t require a paid subscription to the journal or MedInfoNow. Bummer.

Is MedInfoNow worth the $129/year I’m paying? Hardly. My subscription expires in June 2012. I won’t be renewing.

In this case it’s ASHP’s Interactive Handbook on Injectable Drugs: IV Decision Support by Lawrence A. Trissel. Every pharmacist working in a hospital pharmacy knows about this reference. And if they don’t then they have a big problem because it’s only one of the most definitive reference sources for IV compatibility. Over the course of my career it’s simply been know as “the Trissel’s”. (kind of like “the Talyst”…just sayin’ – private joke people)

There’s a link in the ASHP web store leading to a “getting started video”, but I couldn’t get the video to run. Little bit of a fail. Perhaps ASHP’s never heard of YouTube. Who knows.

Link to Android version is here.

Link to iPad version in iTues store is here.

I’ve used Medscape for years. In fact, it was one of the first online reference sources that I signed up for when I became a pharmacist back in 1997. Unlike today, online information was hard to come by back then.

I like the way Medscape has always tailored their content by specialty, i.e. I have my set to Pharmacist so I get mostly information that applies to my profession.

I only spent a little time with Medscape Reference this morning, but it has a nice layout with a good amount of information. Enjoy.

Anyway, I was reading through the MedicalSmarphones.com website and came across the video below demonstrating Epocrates Essentials for Android. It’s pretty cool. I’d love to see it on a Samsung Galaxy Tab or Motorola XOOM. As far as that goes I’d love to see Lexicomp software on a Samsung Galaxy Tab or Motorola XOOM as well.