I'm
interested in trying to make some of my own hyperlinked documents for the
PDA. How should I get started?
There's a tremendous need for the development of more
medical references for use with a PDA. To get started, we have two
similar resources. The first is an online tutorial explaining the
transformation of a Word document into a hyperlinked PDA document.
Check
it out here. The second is a PowerPoint presentation covering
similar information but with a little more background. It is best
viewed with a high-speed internet connection.
Check
it out by clicking here.
After reading through these, please feel free to contact
us with any questions or problems you may be encountering. We are
actively helping a number of authors who are currently developing their
own hyperlinked documents and would be glad help you too. When
you're done, make sure to let us know so we can add your document to the
Medical iSilo™
Depot.
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If
you teach people how to make their own Meister-style references aren't you
going to put yourself out of business?
Maybe. MeisterMed was started when the author
discovered that all of the medical information needed on his PDA wasn't
available or easy to access. The need for new medical references is
huge and far exceeds the capacity of MeisterMed to develop. It's
truly tragic that medical mistakes are being made all the time because
medical references are inaccessible at the point-of-care where they are
needed. The primary goal of MeisterMed
is to help health care providers provide better patient care both through
the applications we develop and those we help others develop.
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About
MeisterMed
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Someone told me that
MeisterMed used to be called FPPalm.com. Why did you change your
name?
In brief, we changed our name for three reasons:
-
to avoid a trademark infringement lawsuit from Palm,
Inc for the use of Palm in our name
-
to broaden our market from family physicians (FPs) to
all health care providers
-
to broaden our market from Palm OS PDAs to all medical
PDA users.
More details are available by
clicking here.
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Wouldn't it be more
accurate to refer to MeisterMed releases as "documents" rather
than "programs" or "applications"?
MeisterMed applications are not stand-alone
programs. They are documents or e-books written for viewing in the
iSilo document reader. The term "document," however, fails
to adequately represent the power and functionality of a complex and
thoroughly hyperlinked reference. "Application" is a
general term that means "software that executes a specific task"
and it applies well to MeisterMed's e-books. Purists may
disagree. In common parlance, many people refer to anything that
installs onto a computer as a program.
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The
MeisterMed applications I'm using are awesome! I may be sorry for
asking this but why aren't you charging money for them?
Currently almost all of MeisterMed's clinical references
(all except STD 2006) are
Freeware. We are charge registration fees for our
administrative/coding references to support the costs of developing new
references and maintaining MeisterMed. Our overall goal is to help
health care providers provide better patient care and making freeware
available helps get these applications into as many hands as possible.
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Who
is behind MeisterMed?
MeisterMed was created in March 2001 by Dr. Andrew
Schechtman, M.D., a board-certified family physician. He completed
his undergraduate education at the University of California at Berkeley and
medical school at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He
trained in Family Practice at Merrithew Memorial Hospital (now called
Contra Costa Regional Medical Center) a family practice-run, county
hospital in Martinez, California. He also completed additional
training in Clinical Tropical Medicine and Traveler's Health at Tulane
University in New Orleans.
Since training, Dr. Schechtman has worked in a number of
settings. He practiced as a solo-practitioner in suburban New
Orleans and has staffed emergency rooms in rural Louisiana. He has
also served in locum tenens assignments with the Indian Health Service in
the Dakotas and has volunteered with Doctors without Borders projects in
Guatemala, Uganda, and Liberia. He has been a clinical
faculty member of the Family Practice Residency program at Ochsner Clinic
Foundation in New Orleans, serving as Assistant Program Director for two
years and the Acting Program Director for one year until mid-2002.
Currently, Dr. Schechtman is a member of the core faculty of San Jose-O'Connor
Hospital Family Medicine Residency Program.
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Why
was MeisterMed created? What is its mission?
MeisterMed was created when MeisterMed's owner
simultaneously discovered how handy PDA's were and how little medical
reference information was readily available. He started by creating
CodeMeister when he saw how limited the coding accuracy was when he chose
a code from a one page "superbill" and it was then translated by
a medical assistant with little coding knowledge. He developed
CodeMeister to ease his own clinical practice and shared it with others
when he realized how helpful it was.
Since CodeMeister, he's gone on to create a number of
medical references with the goal of helping medical students, physicians,
and other health care providers access medical reference information in an
easy-to-use format at the point of care.
CodeMeister was changed from freeware to shareware in
August 2001 to help support the expense of running MeisterMed. Now,
all of MeisterMed's coding references are commercial products. Doing
this has allowed us to keep almost all of our clinical products as freeware. We
have a number of new clinical references currently in development.
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I've noticed that
MeisterMed has been a supporter of Doctors without Borders. What is the
affiliation?
MeisterMed's owner is an active member of Medecins Sans
Frontieres/Doctors without Borders (MSF) and has done volunteer work with
MSF in Guatemala, Uganda, and Liberia. In its first years of
existence, MeisterMed contributed a portion of
all revenue to Doctors without Borders. In mid-2002, we decided to
continue supporting MSF/Doctors without Borders in other ways. For
instance, in mid-2002, Dr. Schechtman, the founder of MeisterMed, left for
a year of volunteer work with MSF/Doctors without Borders in Liberia.
The revenue generated by MeisterMed has helped make extended periods of
non-paying work like this feasible. MeisterMed has periodically
donated money to MSF but no longer donates a fixed portion of revenue.
Please note that the company MeisterMed has no formal relationship with MSF/Doctors without Borders and is not officially affiliated with nor
endorsed by this organization.
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Will I get a lot of spam
if I register with MeisterMed?
No, you won't. We don't share or sell your e-mail
address. You will only receive an occasional e-mail from us here at
MeisterMed to announce a new release or an update. Our policy is to
limit e-mail mailings to a maximum of once a month. You can review
our full privacy policy here. If you have
registered and don't wish to receive any e-mail from MeisterMed, you can
send
us an "unsubscribe" e-mail by clicking here. Please
note that you will not have access to MeisterMed updates if you
unsubscribe.
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