Running the risk of sounding geeky (tech-wise) and nerdy (medicine-wise), I'm FREAKING excited about the ipod touch sdk roadmap. I feel so dumb realising it now only when sdk has been released since feb, probably because the beginning of apple's webcast of sdk was so heavily-laden with tech info that i gave up and closed quicktime.
OMG! Epocrates and skyscape natively on ipod! How cool is that? Ok, many other medicine people are going to argue that they are already available on Palm, but for me, having to lug around my dad's Palm (which is a white elephant for him already) on top of my ipod touch is such a drag. Having everything in my ipod touch would be such a cinch! Of course, having everything would mean to have an iphone, but we all know that Singapore is insignificant enough to not be able to get legal usage of iphone, at least as yet.
Check out the demo of epocrates that was developed in just 2 weeks, these engineers are brilliant!
The especially coolest part is the drug physical description. Just enter the same vague information that the patient provides you with, i.e. i took an orange triangular pill and poff, comes out all the images of available medications that fit that description (perfect with the beautiful resolution on the screen) and then you may enter the actual drug description, including adverse reactions, indications etc. There is even that function of inserting the patient's multiple medications and checking if there are drug-drug interactions!
Although, i daresay skyscape is probably going to be the most useful for us now, but think about the possibilities with this version of epocrates (though truth be told, i haven't an inkling of how the current one works with Palm, so these apps may already be available on the Palm).
So exciting! In my own desperation to make any form of portable information (without having to lug an extra Palm around), I thought a Palm emulator on jailbroken ipod touch (hee hee) would do nicely to integrate the existing skyscape, unstable as it may still be. To my utter dismay, the only promising lead of such an emulator is by Styletap, who disclosed that they are only experimenting and have no intention or obligation to release an actual Palm emulator product. Bummer.
And so.... I would have to make do with m.epocrates.com on my safari. I'm feeling so sad and impatient! Haha, with the release of sdk in feb, the App store will only be out in June and my biggest qualm with apple is their need to put everything in stores and charge them! Arrgh! Itunes store, movies store, etc etc. I wonder how much I would have to pay to get either program in my ipod and more importantly, any cracks around it (hee hee). Somewhat apt is the release date for sdk, june, aka the time i would officially be considered as entering my 3rd year as a med student into the hospital. Though it makes little difference in that sense, since I'm already going to the wards.
All the same, it IS something for me to look forward to. For now, I have to make do with simple Gameboy, Scrabble, Text twist etc on my ipod. The mac tech lovers out there would know of the rumoured upcoming 3G iphone (the back is so glossy black and pretty!) which i have not yet contemplated how it would fit into my future gizmo itinerary.
