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Lifedrivedoc.com began as a place to talk about the Lifedrive. It soon became apparent that it was much more than that. Since moving on from my Lifedrive, I am engaged in more avenues of technology. That technology has intersected with my professional life - Medicine as well as my social life.

As noted above, the blog is about a lot of things in relation to technology. If you are looking for Lifedrive related material, I am currently dividing the blog so that those searches will be easy for you to find. Most of them will be pre 2007, that should help. Additionally, if you are looking for the links that used to be on the left border. They will be back up in a different format soon. I do enjoy reading about new things to do with the Lifedrive, so you can feel free to let me know about those. I will also post those on the site.

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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Styletap may provide an answer for those of us on the wings

So this serves as the first post for the year. And what a discovery. Styletap, a company known more for their Windows Mobile products than anything else, specializes in creating Palm Emulation software for these devices. It would appear that our Windows friends have been taking advantage of the wonderful Palm software through emulation (and I must say they have kept quiet about it...:)).

Now the company has provided a proof of concept video that embarks upon turning the whole handheld market into disarray. For now, it's been Palm vs. Microsoft in the handheld space, with the former taking its knocks, almost becoming extinct. Now, Apple has joined the party. As I noted back in January of last year, Widgets will probably be the entry point for most software when the iPhone SDK comes out later this month. But what is now interesting is the fact that Styletap has created a Palm Emulator for the iPhone/iTouch! For those of us sitting on the side, wondering what it would be like to have an iPhone, but holding back because of software issues, this could be very interesting.

One of the programs noted in the video is iSilo. This is a must-have for most Palm owners who have medical software. The demonstration appears flawless and also incorporates the Apple virtual keyboard. Another program, Statgrowth from Statcoder is also shown (http://www.statcoder.com/). This important tool is a must-have if you need baseline numbers. The collection of software tools from Statcoder include:

1. Stat E&M Coder.
2. Stat ICD-9 Coder.
3. Stat CPT Coder.
4. Stat NCD Lab Coverage.
5. Stat Growth-BP.
6. Stat Cholesterol.
7. Grace ACS risk.
8. Stat Cardiac Clearance.
9. Stat Hypertension JNC 7.
10. Stat A-Fib Stroke Risk.
11. Depression PHQ-9 Score.
12. Stat Diabetes.

All of these follow the same engine and so should work with the emulator. Noticeably absent, and a major concern, is a relational database program or software that requires any form of significant data entry/storage. I would think that this would create significant issues with the disk. All of the programs listed are essentially, non-volatile ram resident programs. The type that would work on any non-nvfs file system or early Palm systems.

Of course, with the release of the SDK for the iPhone and iTouch, the emulator may become irrelevant, with companies deciding to "emulate" the most successful Palm programs natively. There are now 4 million + iPhones in the hands of customers, a large enough base to make it worthwhile for the software developers to look at this. As I write this, I am still waiting for an answer from Dataviz in regards to writing for the iPhone/iTouch. It would seem that this would be a profitable venture for them too.

Over the next few months, I think that the handheld space will once again become important as this proof-of-concept emulator may be the tip of the iceberg.


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