Penn Medical students often find themselves struggling to keep up with the rapidly advancing field of medicine, but with their new PDA-version Epocrates Essentials software in hand, their training should be made a little easier.
This year, the School of Medicine will be providing free and discounted medical reference software to students and faculty, financed by an anonymous donation as well as a deal struck between the Medical School and Epocrates, Inc.
The software, Epocrates Essentials Mobile Clinical Reference Suite, is aimed at improving the quality of patient care and providing medical students with an opportunity for online learning. It can be downloaded onto personal digital assistants, allowing health care providers to access medical information on the spot.
"When you're taking care of a patient and some issues come up ... instead of trying to find a PC or a library to look something up, there's a little device in your pocket," Medical School Vice Dean for Education Gail Morrison said.
Epocrates Essentials contains information about drugs, diagnoses, diseases and lab references. In addition, the suite contains hundreds of diagnostic tests, a multiple-drug interaction checker and health plan formularies.
"It's another tool in their arsenal to take care of patients," Nursing professor Kathryn Bowles said.
Medical students on clinical rotations will be able to access the database for free for one year, made possible by the donation of a Penn Medical School alumnus. All other medical students, interns, fellows and faculty will be able to access Epocrates for a price reduced by at least 50 percent -- the result of a deal made between the Medical School and Epocrates Inc.
"Epocrates is a great reference tool and at our stage of training, we might not otherwise have been able to afford to get it," second-year Medical student Daniela Cohen said.
With approximately 720 medical students, 900 interns, 800 fellows and 2,500 faculty members, the school made a big purchase.
Students and faculty will be responsible for providing their own PDAs. For those who do not own a PDA device, a Web-based version of Epocrates Essentials can be accessed online.
Many other medical schools use Epocrates Essentials software as well. What makes Penn unique, according to Morrison, is that most schools do not buy the software in bulk, but instead require their students and staff to purchase it on their own.
However, according to Epocrates spokeswoman Katherine Thornberry, half-priced discounts are also available for individual students wishing to buy the product.
"We have discount programs with most every medical school in the country," Thornberry said.
Although most Penn Medical students look forward to using their Epocrates gift, some expressed indifference.
"I don't use a PDA," second- year Medical student John Openshaw said. "If I did, I think it would be a wonderful thing."
Epocrates also provides a reference suite for nurses, which just came out this week. The Epocrates Essentials for Nurses includes all the information in the physician version plus a DocAlert channel that provides daily nursing updates. The DocAlert feature is also available for specialized medical fields like psychiatry.
Bowles, who teaches about Epocrates Essentials in her applied health and informatics class, said that the School of Nursing has no formal plan to buy the software in bulk, although many Nursing students buy it on their own.
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