Jerry Fahrni

DynaMed – an evidence based medicine point of care tool

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Jerry Fahrni

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Our facility is running a trial of  DynaMed, “an evidence based medicine point-of-care” database. It reminds me of UpToDate.

From the DynaMed site:

• According to the National Academy Press (2001) 44-98,000 American deaths per year occur due to preventable medical errors; medical errors are estimated to cost the U.S. $17 to $29 billion annually
• Using the “best available evidence” for clinical decision-making improves health outcomes and reduces health care costs
• Busy clinicians use “fast and easy” resources expected to answer most of their questions instead of resources designed to provide the best current evidence
• Clinicians sometimes turn to textbooks and online resources with substantial breadth, but these resources do not use the best available evidence
• Physicians and other health care professionals need a resource where they can reliably answer most questions quickly and accurately (i.e., with the best available evidence)


The application is web-based and easy to use. I only played around with it for about 30 minutes, but was satisfied with what I saw. DynaMed has a nice list of clinical calculators and supports the use of handhelds, including the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android based devices.

I’ll spend some more time evaluating DynaMed next week, but at this time I prefer UpToDate over DynaMed for the following reasons:

1) UpToDate appears to, on the surface at least, contain more in-depth  information on any given condition

1) UpToDate use Lexi-Comp for their drug information

2) UpToDate has a nicer user interface

Here’s a link to a study in the November/December issue of Annals of Family Medicine that takes a look at the use of DynaMed by primary care clinicians.

Images of DynaMed below.

Comments

4 responses to “DynaMed – an evidence based medicine point of care tool”

  1. Amanda

    “Busy clinicians use “fast and easy” resources expected to answer most of their questions instead of resources designed to provide the best current evidence”

    Yes, like the surprising number of physicians who use wikipedia as a resource. Makes me crazy!

  2. Jerry Fahrni

    I couldn’t agree more. Wikipedia is not a source of information for healthcare professionals as I have openly said on my side more than one. Thanks for the feedback.

  3. Dan

    It does not appear that UpToDate was not part of the study you provided link. Are ther studies that compare multiple resources?

  4. Jerry Fahrni

    Hi Dan,

    Yes, there are studies that compare multiple resources. They are a little outdated, but still offer good general information (thanks to Kevin Calusen for the information below).

    “One assessed online drug info databases (BMC Med Inform Decis Mak full-text at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6947-7-7.pdf) and found Clinical Pharmacology performed best, barely edging Micromedex.

    The other study extended the previous by evaluating online drug info databases’ PDA counterparts (Pharmacotherapy http://www.atypon-link.com/PPI/doi/abs/10.1592/phco.27.12.1651). Lexi performed the best in the PDA category. Lexi’s PDA products have fared well in other specialties since then, including an October 2009 article on nursing-specific databases where it tied for best performer (Int J Med Inform http://bit.ly/4AjHgX).

    A final takeaway from the literature on this topic is the room for improvement in these tools – highlighted by the most recent (Oct 2009) study which demonstrated a 4% error rate across all databases.”

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