Physik's List

When revising for my pathology exams, I did what any self-respecting medical student would do - I tried to buy a better set of notes than my own. Of course it had to be on the Palm Pilot. And preferably it had to be good. I soon stumbled onto Physik's List, a comprehensive set of lists that are the bread-and-butter of medicine. Having passed my exams, I decided it was time to find out more about the creator, Dr Mark Bailey.

You're quite enthusiastic about handheld computers - what first got you interested ?

I suppose I've always dreamed about a gadget that could handle everything from diary and address book functions to communication, navigation and even multimedia entertainment - which was also small and robust enough to have with you at all times. I always thought that a touch-screen and desktop computer synchronisation would be key features and so when I first found out about the Palm Pilot in 1996 … I guess it was "love at first sight"! The real crunch came when I lost a bulging Filofax and address book and I've never looked back since.

Tell us a bit about Physik's Lists.

It started because I've never really found a medical handbook that I liked. Even if the original content is good, you can't edit or add to it easily. Handbooks also tend to be poorly laid out to save space and have an inadequate small-print index at the back even though that's the place you go to more often than anywhere else in the book. Although these handbooks can be useful in clinical practice, I found them impossible to study from because of the problems above, but then what use is a larger textbook if you can't have it with you at all times to checkup on things ? Another factor was that I've always hated "list-learning", but sadly for MRCP exams that's what you have to do and most people seem to end up with a grubby set of flash cards that they are forever having to rewrite and then get thrown away after the exam. In view of all this I decided to write my own "peripheral brain" on a PDA.

What's your experience of having customers all over the world?

Mostly good, though it's sometimes surprising how many people fail to read instructions and FAQs [Frequently Asked Questions], or even try out a demo before they buy! Actually it's nice to hear from folks all over the world who use stuff that I've written. I'd really like to be able to charge less for medical students and people from developing countries, but there just doesn't seem to be a way at present. Overall I'm still disappointed at the proportion of my "customers" who are from the UK … maybe I should switch to US spellings after all!

What's your next PDA project?

Well I'm restructuring the EPOC (Psion) version of Physik's Lists at present and then I've promised to do a WinCE / Pocket PC version. After that I have several projects on the drawing board, but I'd rather keep people guessing for now. Suffice to say that most of the stuff I'll be working on next will be written in HTML [Hypertext Markup Language, the language of web pages], PDF [Portable Document Format, with documents that work on all computers] or Java [a programming language, with programs that works on all computer] I think these are the future.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to develop a PDA application?

Most important is to make sure that whatever you develop is useful to you personally. That way if nobody else shows any interest, then you won't be disappointed. Make your work available as freeware to begin with and then think very carefully before charging for it. Going commercial or even selling as shareware brings all sorts of hassles with it. Try to be helpful and contribute to the handheld medical computing community as a whole. Otherwise you could just be seen as someone that wants to make money. Err … wear sunscreen … as the song says!

How do you expect handheld medical computing to develop over the next 10 years ?

I expect most doctors to have a PDA in their pocket, a sub-notebook in their bag and to be using a "tablet" device during consultations. Exactly what they will be able to do with each machine depends largely on developments in battery technology I think. There seem to be all sorts of promising developments in voice recognition, wireless communications and screen technology, but very little about more powerful batteries that will be needed for handheld hardware to develop further. I think a merger between handheld computers and mobile phone technology is inevitable, but will require faster wireless transmissions and attention to the problems of interference with other medical equipment and some proper research on the potential health effects on users. As for which operating system we will all be using, then I can quite definitely say … that I don't know what to expect! All three of the current handheld platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, but I think the ability to work on different sizes of handheld machines and to handle HTML, PDF and Java formats could well be important. I do expect there to be room in the market for at least two handheld operating systems to survive, especially if they cooperate on data synchronisation between platforms.

The USA seems to be leading in all things to do with PDAs - how do you see the UK and Europe in comparison ?

I really don't know why people on this side of the Atlantic are so slow off the mark in this area. In terms of hardware, Psion and Symbian (EPOC) are a major force and also well placed to take advantage of the excellent mobile phone networks over here. Personally I don't think the UK National Health Service has the financial, technical or administrative resources to achieve mass implementation of handheld technology. I expect a few well-motivated Family Practices might be able to implement something, but for the rest I think the emphasis will have to remain on individual users and standalone applications. In terms of medical software it may seem that all the key applications have already been written. However, I think that there are some items that will always need to be written on a national rather than an international basis. For example US drug formularies are unlikely to prove successful on this side of the Atlantic. Even textbooks and other reference works seem to be fairly country-specific, so I think there is still opportunity for UK and European doctors to write medical applications for handheld computers. Actually I think that the medical textbook industry is due for a major upheaval from the current technology revolution. Medical journals seem to have embraced the changes pretty well, but I think the antiquated practices of many textbook publishers are about to be challenged. Anyway I digress…

Have you found it difficult combining a medical career with your involvement in the medical handheld computing scene?

Medical handheld computing is really just a hobby and only one of several distractions from my medical career! Actually my other hobbies are probably a lot more interesting, but I'll tell you about those some other time ;o)

Interview with Dr Mark Bailey