Hi!
got this from another list.
sharon
PORTLAND, OREGON - In a few months, the newest doctor - and one of the first
doctors of her kind in the nation - will hang her shingle in the Portland,
Oregon area. Chris L. Cooke will become one of the first totally blind
doctors in the US with a specialty in naturopathic medicine.
The new Dr. Cooke, blind since birth, will carry the usual medical
instruments in her black bag, including a blood pressure cuff, a
thermometer, and a Pocket PC crammed with medical references - a tool most
modern doctors rely on to help with diagnosis, prescribing the right
medicine, and ordering and interpreting lab work. The difference is her
tools of the trade will talk. In fact, in large part, she credits her
ability to be a good doctor to a PAC Mate accessible Pocket PC for the blind
and two Oregon men who made medical reference software accessible to the
visually impaired, using the PAC Mate.
The PAC Mate is the first and only accessible Pocket PC that is founded on
mainstream technology. As such, it does more than talk; it can run many
programs developed for off-the-shelf Pocket PCs - including medical
software.
The PAC Mate also incorporates JAWS for Windows (r), leading screen reading
software that can easily be adapted with scripts to make those programs
accessible for blind users.
Cooke, who at 40 is completing her last months' studies at the National
College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, chose naturopathy as her
specialty because, "Naturopathy combines the prescription of (standard
manufactured) drugs with natural remedies and emphasizes general diagnosis,
the use of natural therapeutics and traditional medicine, and we work with
diet,nutrition, life style, and botanical medicine," she said.
"Ultimately,naturopathy is about treating the whole body and finding the
cause of disease and not just symptoms."
Naturopathic specialists are licensed in 15 states and all Canadian
provinces. "We study the first two years the same as any MD studies -
pharmacology and all the basic sciences," she said. "In the last two years,
we do thousands of hours of clinical work, and study nutrition, natural
therapeutics, homeopathy, and botanical medicine. That's where it is
important to have (portable) access to medical research and current
information. Medical knowledge changes weekly. It wouldn't be practical to
scan all this information and print it. It would be too unwieldy to have to
look through all those printed resources and keep them updated, even with
sighted assistance."
"In my third year of medical studies last year, I realized that all the
comprehensive medical reference software out there was moving toward PDAs
(Personal Digital Assistants, also called Pocket PCs) or the Internet," she
said. "You don't always have an Internet connection, so I decided a PDA
would be best for me."
Cooke was interested in Epocrates Essentials an all-in-one mobile guide to
drugs, diseases, and diagnostics. "I looked into what could possibly run
this kind of program for me (and be accessible). Only the PAC Mate could, so
I contacted the Oregon Commission for the Blind and requested the purchase
of a PAC Mate."
She chose the BX 440 model which comes with a braille display and
Perkins-style keyboard, often used by the blind in place of the traditional
QWERTY typewriter layout keyboard. The PAC Mate, as with any mainstream
Pocket PC or PDA, allows her to take notes, write and receive e-mail, surf
the Web with an Internet connection, use a calendar, calculator, and other
standard PDA functions all made accessible for the blind.
"I really enjoy my PAC Mate," said Cooke. "I take all my chart notes on it
and print them out on a portable printer that works with it. I like the
flexibility of having the traditional PDA applications running on my PAC
Mate."
She still had one more obstacle in her way. The professional medical
software written for PDAs was not accessible to the blind. "I knew the PAC
Mate would run the (Epocrates) software, but it would need to be scripted to
be accessible to me."' That's where Michael Hooks, a legally blind former
assistive technology specialist at the Washington State School for the
Blind, stepped in. Along with his associate, Chris Meredith who is totally
blind, Hooks owns and operates Next Level Assistive Technology, a Vancouver,
Washington-based business that serves the greater Northwest.
The company consults with universities, government agencies, and others on
assistive technology and also sells accessible technology products.
Scripting is the process of writing a series of statements that tells JAWS
how to navigate or what to read under different conditions. With the
blessing of Epocrates, Inc., Hooks and Meredith began writing a script for
the PAC Mate that would make the software accessible.
"I've been writing scripts for JAWS since 1996, basically since its
inception," Hooks said. "I have a lot of experience, but this was the first
time I had written a script for the PAC Mate. A week or so later, Chris
(Meredith) and I had it scripted, ready to go, and functional. The PAC Mate
is truly the most powerful PDA for the blind on the market today. Most
(Pocket PC software) can be installed and will work right out of the box.
Because The PAC Mate uses JAWS, we can easily script programs to be fully
functional. Competing products don't have that kind of flexibility."
"I was amazed at how quickly they had Epocrates scripted for my PAC Mate,"
Cooke said. "I also enjoyed being part of the process, where
(Hooks and Meredith) were not familiar with something medical, I could give
them suggestions about how it worked best with us. It worked out really
well."
Cooke practices 12 hours a week in her school's teaching clinics and a
community clinic. With Epocrates made accessible, "Now I have access at my
fingertips to diagnosis tools, signs and symptoms of diseases, and causes
and treatments. I also have a lab tool. If I want to order a lab, I know how
much it's going to cost. I can interpret the lab work. Within one tool, I
also have an infectious disease component, so, let's say, if someone comes
in with Strep throat, I can look it up and see what drugs are usually used
to treat it." She also is using Pocket Excel on the PAC Mate to set up a
450-item spreadsheet of medicinal product ingredients, prices, and pertinent
information she needs when seeing patients.
Hooks and Meredith have gone on to write scripts that make two additional
medical reference guides for Pocket PCs accessible on the PAC Mate. One
program is a reference manual for the chart codes for diseases. The other is
a series of internal medicine manuals.
"I definitely get great benefit from my PAC Mate with all of these
programs," Cooke said. "I can look up things during my clinic shifts, things
that all doctors are expected to look up like drugs and the interactions
they might have and what herbs interact with prescription drugs. I can also
look up side effects of drugs patients are on now. If I'm diagnosing a
potential disease, I have the explanations there of differential diagnoses,
and I can present them for a case. Mostly, it's just a great tool to have
for all of these things."
With her accessible tools, Cooke said, she can practice medicine on a level
playing field with her sighted colleagues. "The only thing I need help with
is a student or doctor to assist me with things, like if a person needs me
to look at a rash or needs me to look into an ear." In fact, other doctors
have asked Chris to use her PAC Mate to help them rapidly develop treatment
plans.
As for her patients' reaction to her blindness and her unique accessible
medical tools, Cooke says, "Occasionally, a patient is taken aback for a few
minutes, but because I talk and really listen to them, they really enjoy
working with me. They are always fascinated by the PAC Mate and what it is.
They are fascinated by the braille display particularly."
Chris expects to set up her practice in Portland, with a second office in
nearby Newberg.
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