The Medcalc Interview

Medcalc must be one of the most well known and widely used medical applications in PDAs and PDA phones today. It’s also one of the best medical freeware available today in multiple platforms – PalmOS, Windows mobile and iPhone. Ever wondered who’s behind Medcalc? Well wonder no more, as we bring you the interview with the Medcalc folks!

The team behind Medcalc: Mathias Tschopp and Pascal Pfiffner, two Swiss Medical Doctors “with an interest in Medical Informatics and a strong belief that quality tools should be freely available”

PD: Could you tell us a bit about yourselves, your background and what
inspired you to come out with Medcalc?

Mathias: I’m a doctor trained in the fields of internal medicine and intensive care. I’ve always had a passion for computers. I developed and distributed on the internet my first shareware in 1994 (QuickEditor, a video editor for Mac and then Windows). I started MedCalc in 1997, it was then a Psion 5 application that I never distributed. Then came the Palm version in 2000, distributed as a
freeware. Then the Windows Mobile version and now the iPhone !

Pascal: I’ve only finished medical school little over a year ago and am currently doing an MD-PhD with focus on immunology and bioinformatics. This means I’m still a full time student and unfortunately keeps me away from patients (well, maybe that’s better for everybody 😉 ).
When I started my medical studies I also discovered how much fun programming actually is and began coding some websites and databases. Some years ago, Apple released OS X 10.4 Tiger and I also started developing Dashboard Widgets, and this got me started with Obj-C and native development on Mac OS X. From there it was a small step towards developing iPhone applications and I was very excited when the SDK finally came to life. The iPhone replaced my Palm and I brought Eponyms to the iPhone and then asked Mathias if he was interested in bringing MedCalc to the iPhone. And here we are today.

PD: You have Medcalc in Palm, WM and iPhone flavours now – that’s a rarity for freeware. How do you guys do it? Will development continue in all platforms if/when new modules are added?

Mathias: The decision to port to another platform basically came down to supporting the platform I was actually using at the time, since I’ve always been the primary user of the app. The iPhone version
definitely wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Pascal contacting me and offering to help for the port. I just wouldn’t have had the energy (and probably know-how) to do another port on my own. The funny thing is that Pascal and I never met (in fact we were separated by thousands of kilometer when we starter working on it) but it’s been a great experience developing the app with him, the iPhone version is certainly the best version of MedCalc that ever shipped. As far as future development, the iPhone version keeps us busy at the moment and we don’t expect work on another platform for now.

Pascal: I can only agree on Mathias’ words. The idea behind bringing MedCalc to the iPhone came to my mind because I wanted to use it on my iPhone myself. I’m really glad I contacted Mathias, I can only imagine the time I’d have “wasted” in collecting all the data about the formulas, and his knowledge about the preferences of his former MedCalc users as well as his own likes and dislikes is fantastic. MedCalc would be far from what it is now when either of us would have done it on his own (I hope Mathias agrees 😉 ), I really appreciate our teamwork.
However, MedCalc for the iPhone is not actually a port, it’s a brand new application specifically designed for the iPhone. Since we both only use an iPhone, the possibility that we’ll do MedCalc for another device it fairly low.


PD: What do you think of Palm’s new WebOS and the Palm Pre? The burning question those of use contemplating getting the Palm Pre is: will you consider porting Medcalc to the WebOS platform?

Mathias: The WM version is basically a Javascript application encapsulated in a bit of native code, so doing a quick port to WebOS (which will it seems only accept javascript applications) would probably not be a lot of work, but it wouldn’t have the level of polish and attention to detail that the iPhone version has, that would require a lot of work I guess. Anyway Palm still has to ship and sell a few devices… let’s talk about it then.

Pascal: I haven’t yet taken a thorough look at what Palm has done there. I’ll certainly think about doing MedCalc for Palm Pre if this device would replace my iPhone. 🙂

PD: What mobile devices do you guys use? Favorite software – medical/non-medical?
Mathias: I use an iPod Touch. Since I’m new to the platform I don’t have a favorite app yet.

Pascal: The iPhone replaced my Palm T5, my older iPod and of course my old cell phone. It’s now the only mobile device I use (not counting my MacBook Pro). Favorite apps – I actually primarily use my iPhone with its main applications: Phone, texting, email, surfing and maps. Public transport schedules and weather forecasts is something I often use, and sometimes I pull up the flight simulator or the parking lot puzzles. In the scientific field I casually use “Molecules”, a 3D molecule viewer, Epocrates and Eponyms.

PD: Do you have any advice for anyone thinking of writing their own medical software?

Mathias: Develop an application that you would use yourself on a daily basis, that’s the key to getting things done right. Also make it freeware, if you wanted to get rich you probably wouldn’t have chose
Medicine as a career 😉

Pascal: I agree on that, the best software is the software you use yourself. While I’m also a big fan of Open Source software, the iPhone makes it really attractive to earn some money for what you’ve done. But remember your student days, the reward you get from kind comments and “thank you”-s is worth more than a few bucks earned.

Sound advice indeed! With that I’d like to thank Mathias and Pascal for taking their time to answer our questions. I am ever so grateful for their efforts and I am sure many of you Medcalc users are too. A zillion thanks once again guys!