Professional Skill Builder To-Go - PDA software for medical students
Introduction
Welcome to the Professional Skill Builder To-Go project. The goal of
this project is to design medical PDA software that:
1) Teaches difficult concepts
2) Gives you the right answers
3) Is easy to use and practical on the wards
This application is for educational use only and is not
meant to replace good clinical judgment.
What's New?
PSB2Go is entirely customizable! What kinds of things can you
add?
- A phone directory specific to your department
- An index for your notes
- Quick facts, pocket cards, links to picture and videos
- A list of medications, with dosages and side effects
A tutorial on how to mod will be posted later, but if you look
at the text files and directory structure that come with the new
installation, it is fairly self-explanatory.
Modules
ABG: The ABG module prompts you for
arterial blood gas values and electrolytes, which it uses to determine the
acid-base status. It currently has the following features.
- Explains how it arrived at the acid-base disorder
based on the numbers it was given
- Displays alternative possibilities (with explanations), based on
the fact that a normal HCO3 can range from 22-28 and a normal pCO2 can range
from 33-45
- Picks up triple disorders
How sensitive/specific is PSB2Go?
PSB2Go was run against 28 cases from the following website, which was
given 4.5/5 stars by the American Thoracic Society:
http://www.anaesthesiamcq.com/AcidBaseBook/ab9_6.php. This site contains
a number of real cases from Dr. Kerry Brandis' personal experience and from
publications. Many of them are fairly complex, representative of a range of
cases with medical and surgical etiologies. The following numbers assume
that you know that respiratory compensation may actually be a primary
disorder when the patient is on a ventilator. An older build of PSB2Go was
90% sensitive and 76% specific at picking up which acid-base
disorders are present. In terms of picking up compensation, PSB2Go was
85% sensitive and 85% specific. The latest build has not yet been
tested.
What's still being worked on?
- Work-up for each acid-base disorder (Dx)
- Treatment for each acid-base disorder (Tx)
Frequently Asked Questions
Will this application work on my device?
PSB2Go currently works only on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile
devices with touchscreens. It is based on Macromedia Flash 7, and there is
currently no Flash 7 plug-in available for PalmOS. There is no Flash plug-in
on the iPhone yet either, though this is in development.
How can I try it out?
Just click on the PDA screen above, this is the actual application.
As long as you have a Macromedia Flash 7 (or above) plug-in installed on
your browser, you should be able to view it. The videos will not display, as
these are intellectual property of the University of Michigan Medical
School.
I have a suggestion regarding this application. Who do
I contact?
Send an e-mail to k-deep at k-deep dot com.
Download
Download PSB2Go:
1) Sync your Pocket PC/Windows Mobile device to your computer using
ActiveSync.
2)
Click here to download the Macromedia Flash 7 plug-in for Pocket
Internet Explorer on your PDA. Copy it anywhere onto your PDA. Double-click
it on your device to install it. (Once it has installed, you may delete the
file on your PDA).
3) Right-click and save the appropriate zip file based on the smaller
number in the screen resolution. For example, if your PDA's resolution
is 240 x 320, you would download the 240 file. To check the resolution of
your PDA, go to Start Menu > Settings > System > Device Information >
Hardware.
4) Unzip this file and copy the 'PSB2Go' folder anywhere
onto your PDA.
5) Open 'PSB2Go.html' using File Explorer on your PDA.
Download modules: The modules that appear on
the PDA on the top right side of this page are already included in the most
recent installation zip files above. Adding new modules to PSB2Go is quick
and easy.
1) Download a module.
2) Unzip it and copy the folder to your PDA into the PSB2Go directory.
3) Add the name of the module to the list in the 'PSB2Go.txt' file (If you
don't have a 'PSB2Go.txt' file, you can right-click
here and save the most recent one).
Note: Older version of the modules used '.ini' file
extensions (instead of '.txt'), so if you are upgrading from an older
version, you may need to re-download the modules. The reason this change was
made was to make it easier for you to edit content directly from your PDA.
How To Update
If your PDA has internet access, click on the 'Update'
button!
OR
1) Right-click here and save
the latest 'PSB2Go.swf' file to your computer.
2) Copy it to the folder where PSB2Go is located on your PDA (overwrite the older copy).
Acknowledgements
Sunny Singh (medicine intern at UT-SW), for pointing out errors
in the ABG module
