Series:
Dave has returned to work on Medic-Aid which has been renamed Phoenix. The latest version is due out towards the end of the year. Visit Dave Kendalls page to look at what he has been up to. The review below was from an early version.
This was an eagerly awaited piece of software after many visits to Dave's bright pink homepage. I have tested an early version which is by no means complete. I was dumbstruck by the quality of interface and depth of programming Dave has been able to produce and the whole program has a very "commercial" polish.
The opening screen gives you some example patients for which there are plenty of stats to look up. On entering a new patient you are taken through several screens of information gathering such that you can even enter the NHS no and GP should you so wish. He has built in security features to protect your data. You can evidently print various lists although I was unable to try this using the shareware restricted version.
Impressively there is also scope to add your own drugs database and your own "plugins" so that it can expand with you. There is an oncall section where you can add on call notes. A section where you can add, tabulate and graph patients results although I could not get it to work well at this point.
Overall there is a lot to see and do but unfortunately at present this was not something I personally could see myself using because of the over inclusiveness of it all. At present I could see myself spending more time entering data than using it and at present would not speed things up for me on a day to day basis. However this is not to detract from what Dave has done; when your handheld is able to interact with your hospital LAN and download the information for you this is exactly the sort of thing you would want.
On this one definitely try it and see if you like it.
See also Wardfive
