Are you looking for a reliable PDA database for antibiotics? Johns Hopkins University Division of Infectious Diseases has developed one--and it's free! The Antibiotic Guide, or ABX Guide for short, is designed as a point-of-care version of their web database of the same name. The website is underwritten by unrestricted educational grants from several pharmaceutical companies.
The ABX Guide can be searched by Diagnosis, Pathogen, and Antibiotic, but records accessed in either the Diagnosis or Pathogen sections will not link to records in the Antibiotic section. You have to return to the Antibiotic search menu to pull up the antibiotic subclass menu and search there for the desired record. You also need to look for the pull-up menus on the bottom of the screen, or you'll miss valuable information. To unlock the full potential of this PDA database you need to be aware of the arrangement of these features.
In order to download the ABX Guide, you first need to register for (free) access to the web version of the database. From there you are easily guided through the installation process. The ABX Guide will run on both Palm OS and Windows CE operating systems, one of the few drug databases available in both formats. You need to have at least 1.2 MB of free PDA memory to run this database.
The ABX Guide is updated regularly. If an update is available when you sync, it automatically updates the contents of your PDA. You can sync using the cradle or by infrared method, and the only problem with syncing the ABX Guide is the amount of time it takes to perform an update. I've found that it usually takes a minimum of 5 minutes to update my PDA.
Those of you who prescribe antibiotics should take a look at this database since it's unique among PDA drug information programs. It is searchable by drug name and class, but also provides diagnostic and etiologic information. If you're looking for a good teaching tool for antibiotic information, the Antibiotic Guide website is also worth looking into. The only real drawback of the ABX Guide is the poor design of the search interface.
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