Windows Phone Thoughts: C-Tools 2.0 Under the Scope

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Friday, June 10, 2005

C-Tools 2.0 Under the Scope

Posted by Darius Wey in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:05 AM


What is C-Tools?
The American Cancer Society (hereafter, ACS) believes that information is the best way to combat cancer. Whether it be information on prevention, diagnosis, or treatment, every little bit helps and that principle was the basis behind the development of C-Tools.

Installation is a breeze, and might I add, highly customisable. As seen in Figure 1, you can choose your platform (as C-Tools supports both Pocket PC and Palm) and what tools you wish to install. For the purpose of this review, I decided to install all of them, and besides, as Francis Bacon said, "knowledge is power". ;-)


Figure 1: Customise your installation.

When installed, C-Tools consumes a little under 1MB of space. Note that you will need the .NET Compact Framework installed in order for C-Tools to work. The latest version (at the time of writing, Version 1.0 SP3) can be downloaded from here.


Figure 2: The main C-Tools interface.

Let's Open The Toolbox!
In total, there are twelve tools available in the package. They include: an Adult BMI Calculator, Cancer Screening Guidelines, Communicating Bad News, Drug Calculator, Emerging Technology, Pain/Symptom Management, Pain Medications Database, Prostate Specific Antigen, Questions Patients Ask, Skin Cancer, Tobacco Control, and Warning Signs of Childhood Cancer. To start off, we'll have a look at the 'Adult BMI Calculator'.


Figure 3: The Adult BMI Calculator.

The 'Adult BMI Calculator' is a little basic but it does the simple task of calculating the body mass index (BMI) of an individual of known height and weight. The condition of the calculated value can be looked up by tapping on the 'Results Chart' button. It is a simple page outlining standard BMI ranges for normal and abnormal weight conditions. One thing you may notice in Figure 3 is that C-Tools only works via the imperial system. I'll happily confess my inability to work with 'feet', 'inches' and 'pounds', so as useful as this tool was, I wasn't too fond of it since I normally use 'centimetres' and 'kilograms' for height and weight respectively. Granted, it is developed by the American Cancer Society, but I think if they wanted widespread adoption of this tool across many different countries, they would need to address this issue and instead have units expressed in both the imperial system and metric system.


Figure 4: Cancer Screening Guidelines.

The next tool, 'Cancer Screening Guidelines', provides general screening guidelines based on the gender and age of the patient and/or the site of cancer in question. In terms of the types of cancer focused on, this tool covers breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, cervical cancer, endometrial cancer and prostate cancer. The information is kept relatively concise and there is some degree of integration with other tools of the C-Tools suite. For example, if you select 'prostate cancer', you have the option of launching the PSA (prostate-specific antigen) tool. Late last year, I reviewed Epocrates Essentials (another medical reference application) and one of the features that made it shine was the great deal of integration between Dx, Rx, Lab and so on. Although C-Tools is nowhere near as large as Epocrates Essentials, just that small degree of integration allows for user-friendly navigation throughout the product.


Figure 5: Communicating Bad News - The SPIKES Protocol.

Next on the list is the 'Communicating Bad News' tool. As a medical professional, the importance of communication skills cannot be stressed enough and ACS have included a short guide on conveying unfavourable news in a physician-patient setting. Different medical schools teach different acronyms. ACS have included one known as SPIKES, and despite the differences, the content of effective physician-patient communication tends to be the same. Reading through this guide was a good refresher. The appendix provides a few extra pointers if required by the user.

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