Thank goodness for the steady march of technology. Do you remember how hard it was to find a BMI calculator in the good old days? You’d actually have to go to Google or Bing and enter “BMI calculator” to find one. How arcane is that? Ditto to find the FRAX calculator for fracture risk. And woe be to those who did not bookmark each recommendation of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force as they came out over the years, since searching the internet for their recommendation on folate supplementation or prostate cancer screening could take a few minutes. Minutes I tell you!
Well, we are busy clinicians and we should not have to waste a few minutes on antiquated techniques like Googling something. Now, we no longer have to. Thanks to modern technology, the information we need to manage all the preventive services needed by each individual patient in our practice is now available as an app. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has an app available for use on iOS and Android devices, as well as desktops everywhere, which makes this information available almost instantly. It is called ePSS, which stands for electronic Preventive Services Selector. You can download it from your download location of choice and install it on your smart phone, tablet, desktop, or all three.
Using this app, you can quickly find information by entering a little information about your patient and presto, all appropriate screening recommendations pop up. You can easily go deeper into each recommendation and why it is needed by clicking on or touching it.
A feature I really like is the Tools section, where every handy calculator you may possibly want is located. If you bookmark those you use more frequently, they will be easier to find the next time you open the app.
While I tend to be somewhat old school in many computer-related issues – I hereby confess to having read the book called Smart Phones for Dummies – the ePPS app is one that I can actually understand and make use of without having to refer to another book from the Dummies series.
Check out the ePPS app and see what you think. Comments are always welcome.
Richard Fleming, MD