ePocrates Rx Pro 6.0

Many folks use medications of various types every day. Tracking and learning the dizzying array available challenges even the medical professionals who deal with them daily. Proper medication, proper dose, interactions with other medications a patient is already taking must all be handled to avoid making a bad situation worse. The Physician's Desk Reference has been the standard tool for this task, but it's size and cost are better suited as a boat anchor than a carry-around reference. ePocrates Rx comes to the rescue.

ePocrates can best be described as a system of applications and databases. It combines a prescription/over-the-counter medication database, alternate medication database, infectious disease treatment program, medical math calculator, and clinical tables. The entire system is updated every hotsync through a conduit licensed from AvantGo.

ePocrates' tabbed interface defines simplicity. Upon opening, it displays a list of over 2800 medications. Search the list by starting to type the name you are seeking. Tap on the name and it brings up a screen with adult dosing and uses for that medication. ePocrates presents critical info about maximum dosages and frequency of dosing, as well as nice-to-know stuff like tablet denominations and forms available. Medications can be listed by name or class.


Tapping the lower left of the screen brings up categories of information available about each medication. These provide extensive and detailed information that can help avoid incorrect medication mixtures and reactions for which to watch. The pricing is based on drugstore.com, and provides a good relative cost estimate to the provider and patient for similar medications. On the patient side, you can and should ask your provider probing questions while still in the office.

To simplify the avoidance of conflicts within a regimen, ePocrates includes Multicheck. This feature allows you to check a patients entire regimine together for conflicts, or any potential conflicts in adding to that regimen. This saves a lot of time and effort tracking individual conflicts when a person takes a number of medications. In the Pro version, Multicheck even works across both the drug and alternate med databases. That's important with the current popularity of "natural folk remedies". Don't be fooled by the hype. The wrong mix can be very hazardous.

In addition to standard prescription and over-the-counter medications, the Pro version includes about 400 alternate medicines. The same information is available as for standard meds, with the addition of reported uses, reported doses, and synonyms for each substance. You can access Multicheck from this tab as well.

The Tables tab contains 45 clinical tables and treatment guidelines. These include forumulas, cardiac treatment guidelines, toxicology antidotes, medical alergy data for classes of meds, and a number of other useful tidbits. Many are useful to patients or family members to monitor treatments. Many provider and patient aren't aware of all medications affected by a particular allergy. Sulphonamides provide a good example. The new and popular arthritis drug Celebrex contains a sulpher radical, which would prevent those with a Sulphonamide alergy from using it. The connection is far from obvious, however.

The last tab access a number of useful applications that come with ePocrates. DocAlert works through the conduit to notify users of changes to the databases, updated treatment regimens, and articles of interest. In the new version, these can be saved as notes on the handheld in addition to futher information obtained through the conduit to be saved on the PC.

ePocrates ID contains a database of treatments for 300 infectious diseases. Treatments are categorized by body location, by bug, and by drug to ease the finding of appropriate treatments. Specific and general treatments are given when appropriate. The medications included in ID are hot linked to the main drug database--a very nice touch. This used to be a separate program in the older versions of ePocrates, but is now integrated with the main program.

MedMath provides a medical calculator for over 30 common calculations. It includes ideal body weight, LDL cholesterol , water deficit, and 27 others. SI or US units can be selected. MedMath is well executed, but not as powerful as MedCalc.

ePocrates also supports another handy feature--formularies. They have a number of formularies available so that physicians and patients can check which meds are available through their insurance companies or HMOs. This new feature continues to grow with time. At this point, my HMO's formulary isn't supported.

Overall, ePocrates provides an incredibly useful tool for the professional and patient or family member. The databases are updated daily at times, and no less than weekly. I'm not in the medical profession, but I've used versions of ePocrates for about three years. It requires that you learn some medical abbreviations and terms here and there, but nothing the average person can't handle. It even includes a list of common medical abbreviations. I personally use ePocrates in conjunction with Dorland's Medical Dictionary from Skyscape--a potent combination. After a few years of diligent use, I actually had a doctor ask if I was a pharmacist after asking some pointed questions based on the power in my hand. I've also caught medication conflicts and dosing problems before leaving the prescribing physician's office.

ePocrates could be improved by providing more hot linking between tables and other displays and the med database. Also, the well-done integration masks the fact that many of ePocrates parts are separate programs. Without an app like McPhling, returning from, say, a MedCalc or ID to the main program could get tedious. A scheme of icons or menu selection to execute sister programs, similar to Star Pilot, would be welcome. The biggest shortcoming is ePocrates lack of support for VFS. All databases must reside in RAM, and the overall program + full databases amount to about 2.1 MB. VFS support is in the future for the program, but it eats a major chunk of RAM in the meantime.

All this doesn't necessarily come cheap. Rx Pro runs $49.99/year for a subscription to the updates. There is a free version that just includes the primary medication database, Multicheck, formularies, and DocAlerts. A clinical board of medical professionals reviews all medication entries and updates, resulting in very high quality information. When I consider the amount of information included, the frequent data updates, the integration, and overall value of the package vs. other competing solutions, ePocrates Rx Pro provides considerable value over other similar references. Anyone who deals regularly with medication issues would do well with ePocrates Rx Pro.