Medical calculator
A medical calculator is a type of medical computer software, whose purpose is to allow easy calculation of various scores and indices, presenting the user with a friendly interface that hides the complexity of the formulas. Most offer further helpful information such as result interpretation guides and medical literature references.[1] Generally, such calculators are intended for use by health care professionals, and use by the general public is discouraged.[citation needed]
Medical calculators arose because modern medicine makes frequent use of scores and indices that put physicians' memory and calculation skills to the test.[2] The advent of personal computers, the Internet and Web, and more recently personal digital assistants (PDAs) have formed an environment conducive to their development, spread and use.
Types of calculators
[edit]Hardware devices
[edit]Purpose-built devices for specific medical calculations are available from various commercial sources. Pharma-Insight Inc. in Canada is one of the only companies in the world that is able to make custom specific medical calculators built to perform a specific medical calculation to make dosing or other calculation easy.[promotion?] Some of the standard units they make include eGFR, CrCl, BMI, BSA, DAS and many other custom units designed for a specific purpose. There are two ways to make a calculator using an array that looks up an answer based on a large array of data or where the calculator computes the answer using a mathematical equation.[citation needed]
PDA
[edit]Software-based medical calculators are available for various PDA-platforms, including the iPhone, Palm and Pocket PC. Handheld battery powered portable units are available and can be manufactured in smaller quantities than before thanks to OTP (one Time Programmable) chips.[3][citation needed]
Online Calculators
[edit]Various websites are available that provide calculations from a browser based input form.
References
[edit]- ^ Cornell Medical Calculators
- ^ Lee P. (2009). "Design of infusion rate calculator tools for intravenous therapy". Nurs Stand. 23 (33): 43–48. doi:10.7748/ns.23.33.43.s52. PMID 19480286.
- ^ Bloice, Marcus D.; Wotawa, Franz; Holzinger, Andreas (June 2009). "Java's alternatives and the limitations of Java when writing cross-platform applications for mobile devices in the medical domain". Proceedings of the ITI 2009 31st International Conference on Information Technology Interfaces. pp. 47–54. doi:10.1109/ITI.2009.5196053. ISBN 978-953-7138-15-8. S2CID 14269766.