Charlie goes to Medical School

Just quick post. There are a couple of tools out there to help you identify pills. Chances are if you are a doctor, you have some form of Epocrates or the like which you refer to. PillBox offers one feature that I’ve seen before in reference software which is pill identification. Color, shape, and the numbers etched in the side can help you identify that pill that for some reason you have pulled out of its container (this can be helpful if a patient shows up with one of those pill-a-day boxes, but can’t remember the names of those pills). The difference here is that PillBox is by the NIH as opposed to some random company that might be more likely to think about charging you. They do caution that you double check any result, but it might help fill in some of those gaps when taking a history.

PillBox via Lifehacker

I didn’t know this was happening tonight.

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram is the company known for Mathematica, a tool used for mathematical computation (among other things).  I didn’t get a chance to play with it much when I was in school, but I was aware of it…sitting in my Calc TA’s office (this was back when software came in boxes).

They have announced this new Wolfram Alpha tool…and I haven’t paid too much attention to it yet.  It apparently interacts with Mathematica and acts like a knowledge base sort of tool.

I’ve been plugging random technical terms in here for the past five minutes.  This is fun.  Click here to check it out.