Franklin Digital Book System S ales of hand-held video games and pocket calculators have made the production of microchip technology cheap enough for companies to sell to specialized markets. As a result, Franklin Publishers has targeted the medical community with a line of electronic medical text books for use in its Digital Book System. Now clinicians have computerized access to books such as The Medical Letter Handbook of Adverse Drug Interactions and The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy in a pocket-sized, convenient format. Ease of use is the most attractive aspect of the Digital Book System.
All books have a similar interface and context-sensitive help screens.
One problem that we found with the system is that it does not highlight the search term. The Digital Book system can be expensive when compared to the price of buying the print version of the textbooks offered, but the producers believe that the portability and accessibility of information is worth the additional cost. Two components make up the Digital Book System, the Book Player and the books. Players hold two books and allow communication between books. For example, a clinician reviewing a manual of therapeutics can pick out a term to look up in a companion medical dictionary.