Monday, January 30, 2012

PubMed Health and Conduit Mobile

PubMed Health was launced in september 2011, "specializes in reviews of clinical effectiveness research, with easy-to-read summaries for consumers as well as full technical reports. Clinical effectiveness research finds answers to the question “What works?” in medical and health care" (from: About PubMed Health)

PubMed Health is a service provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).
The website is put together with a direct "meta" search in several resources, with overviews and updates. They offer two rss feeds to keep up-to-date with the Behind the Headlines & Featured reviews, but not of the new and updated stuff.

PubMed Health Content









Conduit Mobile is a free "tool" to create mobile Apps for all major mobile devices, without coding, easy and quick.
I tested it quickly after launch last year and was not that impressed at first. Time to do a more in depth exploration was not available last year. It's new design in december 2011 was the trigger to plan another try.
I choose to test it with PubMed Health.
PubMed Health Mobile App by Conduit Mobile?
Creating this App was really easy. After login in with you general Conduit account (for Toolbars, Mobile & Wibiya), creating the App is made peanuts with a wide range of pre-set app-elements like Twitter,

Add more pages:

  • News
    Twitter
    Audio
    Facebook
    YouTube
    Photos
    Contact Us
    LiveAlbum
    Module
    Email Us
    Map
    Call Us
    About Us
The most challenging element is the CUSTOM page. Simple html/xml is ok, and Conduit says you can enter search facilities via the Developers Portal. I have loads of custom search enigines configured in many Conduit Toolbars, and would think it is logical to expect to embed/import them INTO Mobile Apps, but so far, that's a no go ;-(
My derived html search boxes do not work in that custom mobile page.
It would be a great help if somebody (Are you listening Conduit Support or Community?) would give me an example of a working search box in there. I HATE programming ( when unnecessary), if I can simply re-use and adapt, it can make my day ;-)

So, here is the edit page of the PubMed Health App:


Once you have added some "pages", uploaded some screenshots, an icon & logo, you can save, publish and upload the App to the following Stores:


  • Android Market (PubMed Health Android; available within a few minutes after uploading the  ConduitApp-release.apk. You need an Android Developer Account (us$25 registration fee)
  • Windows Phone (not tested yet, needs   MSN account, register at App Hub and pay a $99 registration fee. )
  • iPhone, iPad ( needs  Register as an iOS(iPhone Operating System) Developer, us$99 registration fee, on it's way! I expect it within 24 hours)
  • Bada (not tested yet,  need to register as a bada developer, free)
  • Blackberry ( Web app is available, native is coming soon)
  • Mobile Web App (http:/pubmedhealth.mobapp.at        available directly!)
  • Browser App (IE, FF, Safari, Chrome) Add to Browser now
    These browser apps surprised me. They are a nice & usefull visualisation of the App within your browser, plus a clear rss reader.


The App itself shows a simple clear design, with integration of social media for sharing everywhere
So, my first steps on Conduit Mobiel are promising.
Hopefully someone comes up with a solution to embed my derived html search boxes or the custom Toolbar search enigines into this Mobile custom page!
Currently the PubMed Health Mobile App offers:

  1. A Feedity RSS feed on "New and Updated " (test)
  2. RSS on Behind the Headlines
  3. Overview & links to All Contents (see above)
  4. The PubMed Health Twitter account
  5. About PubMed Health
  6. Search page (not functioning yet)
  7. YouTube NLM Channel

I will keep you posted on updates!

Extra:




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