Medicine+Tech

I may not know all medicine, but I know enough to feel alive

Which makes me Lucky and Happy.

renoteapp:

Changes:

• Tags can be Merged
• Better Link Searching
• Stable and Solid.

https://t.co/VnTpEe11qc

(via renoteapp)

Faced that question a few times so let me explain and start with what I made recently:

HLA - Human Leukocyte Antigen Genes

• on Chromosome 6
• Encodes for MHC
• Codominant, (from each chromosome)
• MHC II: HLA-DP,DQ,DR,DM,DOA,DOB
• Mneumonic PQR-DM,DOA,DOB
• MHC I: HLA-a,b,c (mostly b)

Saved this note with tags Lymphatics, Biochemistry, Genetics, Immunology, Hematology, mnemonic. A reason I typed the full “Human Leukocyte..” in the title is because, when searching Links, the app grabs the first line of the note if nothing was typed in the search bar. So I selected a bunch of links from Wikipedia and Youtube. Wordnik, sometimes surprisingly, comes up with good simple medical definitions.

I have more than 300 tags and more than 2000 notes, spanning all sorts of topics. Before I get to Evernote, let’s look at:

The RENOTE workflow

1. Study time

I do take time out specifically for this purpose. I keep renote and other apps (Medscape, LabGear) open. Anything that I deem important to revise & recall later, goes into renote. Its important to underscore the recall part. At the same time, I use it to quickly refer something I would want to know while reading a topic. For example, reading about Dexamethasone Suppression Test reminds me that I’ve read it before, a tap on the tag Adrenal Gland and Diagnostic Tests reveals more notes related to DST, Cortisol, ACTH, Urine metanephrines etc. Its so familiar, its something I typed before and read before. A quick glance is just enough here. I don’t have to get into detail just yet.

It is a complete active process. Sometimes I have to force my self to record certain things into renote. But It does pay off in the long run. What’s cool today, is that iOS 8 Extensions makes it just so easy.

2. Browsing / Out and About.

We all follow medicine on twitter. Read articles on Safari etc. Anything useful, goes into renote. Tweetbot will share the tweet-link, renote will fetch the tweet and display its content. Some twitter profiles share an their instagram links. RENOTE will fetch those too and display the image right there.

3. Not just Medicine.

I (obviously) find renote useful in not just medicine. I use it to store casual notes, which is honestly very rare. Most people make notes that are work related. For me thats just Medicine. Even though I code, I don’t need to store any programming related entires. Theres no point, I just add those links to “Reading List” or Pocket (app). I found my note making was specific to work and that, happens to be, medicine.

But renote remains neutral. Infact, its a great note app as is. I specifically hide all the tag & links complexity from the whole note making process. Its not until you drag-to-reveal, does it show.

4. When On a Desktop

I use a great (free) app called nvALT by Brett Terpstra. It stores notes as text files in a dropbox folder thats usually /nvALT/. Again I rarely make these files, But I do it when I want something to go into renote.

I add a tag to its file name while creating it. Dr Topf email @renote.txt. This tag @renote lets renote know that I want it to import & maintain that file so that I could continue editing there. From there, I’d continue organising it.

This is possible because of a feature called Dropbox AutoImport in renote.

What renote is NOT

• Not a writing app. (iA Writers, Ulysses, Editorial)
• Not a publishing app (Byword)
• Not a pristine “collect your thoughts” app (Vesper)
• Not a capture text app (Drafts)

RENOTE is none of the above apps, for renote, its important to create, edit and retrieve notes fast, really fast. This is where the UI & UX comes into play. I’m really proud of the simplicity RENOTE has here. The guiding principal was to be completely focused on notes. When you want to be fast and focused which takes precedence over the so called “delight”, the best route is to be as predictable as possible. You shouldn’t need to think about app navigation, it should speak for itself, because it’s familiar… and thus completely predictable.

RENOTE has sloppy lazy swipes that is just so familiar to everybody, you don’t have to think about navigating. Its just drag right & left. Tags– laid out perfectly to enable quick sorting and with good predicates. You get instant feedback from the semi-transparent background. All this, coupled with a good syncing solution (courtesy Dropbox) makes a good note storing app thats good enough for typing, reading and referencing.

And that brings us to the Elephant – Evernote

I use evernote. It’s great, possibly the best solution for most people. But it was great for everything except work-related stuff. My work, at the moment, happens to be learning medicine. Wait, I didn’t say it wasn’t good for notes, infact, its perfect for storing links, articles, related notes with tags and everything in the world. But it is just not suitable for instant and comprehensive revision of your notes. It’s like a note dump app, where in, at some point in the future, you might go and search for that note you added a while ago. Honestly, few years from now, perhaps my use-case for academic-reference note making will end. Won’t face any new exams. Maybe then Evernote will be just what I need– but not today!

Problems using Evernote now:

1. Tags-interface does not allow selecting multiple tags together. This was a deal breaker. What if I wanted to review notes belonging to acid-base and endocrine? These are essential inter-note links that are invaluable for me as a student to connect the dots…. and quickly. I use all sorts of combinations for note reviews with AND / OR.
2. The evernotes are big on proprietary format. Sure, you could choose plain text, html would work too. They have their own .enex file format. Its their Lock in thing. If you try to share your note using the convenient iOS8 Share sheet, your sending an evernote link. If you try email, your sending a .enex file. Now, I’m not against such lock-in actions, I’m already locked into Apple. But I wanted renote to have everything transferable and basic. Keep everything in plain text. It’s highly unlikely that my reference notes would ever be in need of rich formatting. And what If I find a better app? I’d indeed export all my notes into the new app and use it.
3. Images: Evernote can store images, RENOTE will not. Those images consume space. Sometimes your valuable priced evernote space. Instead you just add a link within the note. I accept the fact that all images are already stored on the web somewhere and since my medical notes aren’t personal, I don’t mind not hosting them myself. Let wikipedias, instagrams, twitters, dropboxes or other hosting sites do the job. All renote does is, show you the image.
4. Evernote app design was slow, skewed more toward animations and less toward intuitive interactions. Sometimes your greeted with a giant announcement about a new feature. Aaah. That’s the last thing I want.

If you’ve noticed the trend. It’s not that Evernote is bad, it’s good, does the job reliably. So as temporary as it may be, RENOTE has a purpose, specific to my use and hopefully a few more. I made RENOTE because I could, if I couldn’t, then, I think I’d be happy with evernote, but I guess I wouldn’t use it as often as I’d hope to.

Disclaimer:

Its important to note that I do not consider nor advocate Wikipedia to be a reliable source of medical literature. Not at all. All I need is that quick burst of reminder, just a couple of lines telling me a few things about HLA and related, thats more than sufficient

Been a long journey to get to this point. So much riding on its success. Can’t believe I risked it all here. Ahem.

Check out RENOTE, it is a pretty robust note taking app. Specially for the educational/reference usecase.

Feedback is welcome! Or write to hello at renoteapp dot com.

Federico Viticci, of MacStories has a new article out, titled iPad Air 2 Review: Why the iPad Became My Main Computer. Read it, good to geek out once in a while.

Judging by his tweet, some or perhaps many in the world disagree. Many pundits are confused, they talk about the “iPad usecase” for hours and hours on their podcast, other podcasters listen, they contribute to the confusion, they worry why the iPad sales are static, standstill or worst yet, declining. They think somethings got to be done to save the iPad.

After you boil down all the discussion, the question they are really asking is plain and simple – “Why can’t I buy a new iPad every year?”. Well, relax guys, you don’t have too¹. Take it easy :)