Drug-information software for Palm operating system personal digital assistants: Breadth, clinical dependability, and ease of use

Study Objective. To examine the breadth, clinical dependability and case of use of drug-information software programs for personal digital assistants that incorporate the Palm operating system. Design. Prospective evaluation with descriptive analysis. Methods. Nine drug-information software programs were evaluated for breadth, clinical dependability, and ease of use, based on responses to 50 questions. Results. Breadth of information (percentage of questions that could be answered) was 32-75%; LexiComp Platinum was the leader in this category. Clinical dependability (factual completeness) of information was 66.7-100% LexiComp Platinum led this category as well. MobileMicromedex provided the narrowest breadth of information and the least clinically dependable information. Time to locate an answer to posed questions averaged 17.5 +/- 4.98 seconds, The fastest retrieval time was achieved by Davis's Drug Guide for Physicians (12.1 sec). Tarascon's Pharmacopoeia required the fewest viewed PDA screens to locate the requested information (3.3 screens). Cost of programs ranged from free to $129.95. Cost was not related to breadth or clinical dependability. Conclusions. LexiComp Platinum offered the greatest breadth of information and the most clinically dependable content. MobileMicromedex was the least helpful of these products for answering straightforward drug-information questions.