The sorry state of Palm Pre medical apps

By: Brian Dolan | Jul 22, 2009

When the Palm Pre App Catalog first launched in early June it had no medical apps to offer, but among the few applications the App Catalog launched with was an emulator app by MotionApps that promised to bring applications from old Palm platforms to the new Pre. In other words, if you are a health practitioner who has relied on a Palm Pilot for the past ten years, now you can upgrade to a new Palm Pre and use the same applications with more or less the same user experience.

This is set to change soon — hopefully. Palm recently announced that 1.8 million applications have been downloaded from its App Catalog, which is a surprising figure given the relatively few apps (in the dozens) available. The number of Palm Pre devices sold is also only in the hundreds of thousands. Last week Palm announced that its Mojo software development kit (SDK) was now available to any developer. Up until now the SDK was only available to a limited number of developers, so now it’s time to see if developers are still interested in developing applications for the Pre platform. On the medical app front, competition is sparse for the Pre. We hope to hear about some new Palm Pre medical apps soon.

Meanwhile, The Palm Doc Chronicles blog has done a nice job of keeping up with all things Palm-related for healthcare workers, including which of the old Palm applications work on the Palm Pre through the emulator application. While their list of proven apps is still rather short, it serves as a snapshot of the only medical applications available for the Palm Pre.

Read on for a slideshow of the applications from legacy Palm OS devices that now work on the Palm Pre through the emulator app. It’s never been more true: What’s old is new again for Palm in the medical world.

Epocrates Palm OS Palm Pre Epocrates Essentials — From the company: Our medical editors, in collaboration with other respected institutions, have selected the most critical drug, disease, and diagnostic information you need for patient care, and organized it in one really easy-to-use, intelligently linked product. We believe that makes it a must-have mobile resource for busy healthcare professionals. (Most if not all Epocrates Palm OS apps for should work for Pre.)

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Matt

What I find amazing is that everyone wants an app when you can get the online version of epocrates (spelling) for free and updated information. Do not get so wrapped up on the app and get online where information is everywhere…
Jason

MATT – That’s a good idea if you walk around with a Wi-Fi enabled Laptop in your pocket. For those of us that don’t, we need an App like that for a mobile device (hence, Palm). Why wait until you’re near a computer, when you can have access whenever you need it, where ever you are?
http://jerryfahrni.com/2009/07/things-just-got-a-little-better-for-healthcare-professionals-with-a-palm-pre/ Jerry Fahrni » Things just got a little better for healthcare professionals with a Palm Pre

[...] mobihealthnews: “When the Palm Pre App Catalog first launched in early June it had no medical apps to offer, but among the fewapplications the App Catalog launched with was an emulator app by MotionApps that promised to bring applications from old Palm platforms to the new Pre. In other words, if you are a health practitioner who has relied on a Palm Pilot for the past ten years, now you can upgrade to a new Palm Pre and use the same applications with more or less the same user experience.” – This is good news for anyone still holding on to their old Palm OS applications. I, for one, have several as I used to be a Palm Pilot junkie. The article above goes on to list several legacy Palm OS medical applications that will now work on the Palm Pre. Darn you Verizon, when will you get some cool phones? Tags: medical applications, Palm Pre Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment Trackback [...]
Don

Programs that run on palm OS do not RUN on the webOS of the palm pre. There is a difference between paying for a emulation program to run the old palm programs and programs that are made for the new phone’s operating system. Palm did not think it important to provide an emulator, but allowed a 3rd party software concern to bilk its customers. If they spent as much time fixing this problem as they do in stealing the signal from iTunes, they would happier customers. There is a difference between having the Epocrates software work correctly on an iPhone and the palm pre. On one it works, on the other it doesn’t. Plus is this not the only problem. On websites, the palm pre cannot navigate around internal windows, it loses information and thereby becomes less useful as a device, just a toy. And this is after webOS 1.1 update. This was an alpha product released and hyped as good to go. They will probably go out of business on this product and may take sprint with them.
Matt

You do not need wifi…use the 3g network with your pre…works great, enjoy the freedom, no laptop needed. We must all think outside the box or get used to living in one. lol
http://www.pepid.com/press/palmpre.asp Palm Medical

A newer one is the palm medical software app from PEPID. Orders by Feb. 28 get 3 months free and otherwise they have a free 2 week trial with no limitations on it to try it.

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