Medical Dictionary

There are a variety of medical dictionaries available for the Palm, ranging from consumer-class references to full PDA versions of professional titles. At the top of our list for medical education purposes is the Stedman's Concise Medical Dictionary, 4th Edition, published by Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, and available online from Skyscape at www.skyscape.com and from Lexi-Comp at www.lexi.com. The Stedman's Concise contains 48,000 terms, has clearly written definitions, features common prefixes, suffixes and combining forms. It provides the best balance of price and comprehensiveness-and at 7.8MB, it's also the pretty big! We found the Stedman's definitions to be much more technical and useful than the Taber's-the smaller number of terms in Stedman's is offset by a larger volume of more useful information on each term, which is why it is bigger, and our choice for both students and practicing doctors. Also available for PocketPC.

For sheer comprehensiveness, the new Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 27th Edition (available online) cannot be matched, with 102,000 terms defined. This title takes up a whopping 14.4MB on a Palm and 21.2MB on a PPC, so it is advised only for power users with lots of add-on memory. After the Stedman's, our research has shown the Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary 19e to be one of the most strictly comprehensive (55,000 terms) title available, though also quite expensive. Despite this, it is smaller than the Stedman's Concise, at 6.1MB. The print version has historically been aimed at nursing and allied health professionals, and the definitions are more superficial than those in the Stedman's, but it is still appropriate for medical education use. One reviewer found that the search by typing each letter of the word is a little slow, but acceptable. A major strength of both the Stedman's and Taber's titles (both from Skyscape) is the linkage between all Skyscape products, such as 5MCC and DrDrugs. Also available for PocketPC.

Finally, the Beiks Medical Dictionary ( www.beiks.com ), is a reasonable low-priced option. Marketed as "more affordable than Taber's," the Beiks uses Bdicty reader software, and defines the words and common short forms used as well as gives a description in non-formal language about the topic. Although not a professional-grade dictionary, it may be very useful for Med I and II students to get them going. It contains 38,000 terms, and takes up 2.8MB of space. Beiks also distributes a Pocket Medical Encyclopedia, which combines the Bdicty reader with content provided by MedicineNet. Both titles are also available for PocketPC.