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69 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
NEJM is a medical pioneer, May 10, 2009
This review is from: The New England Journal of Medicine (Kindle Edition)
As far as I can tell, the New England Journal (NEJM) is the first medical journal available for the kindle. There are several benefits to getting the NEJM on the kindle, and these benefits will likely lead all the major medical journals to follow suit at some point in the near future.
The benefits:
First, getting the kindle edition eliminates a ton of waste. Walk into any serious doctor's home or office (or even medical library), and you will likely find stacks and stacks of journals. Most copies sit there and collect dust...and only a few are used at any one point (what a waste of trees/paper and space). At some point, all the old journals have to be tied up and recycled (or bound up) (another waste of time and energy). The kindle version of the NEJM eliminates all this waste.
Second, it is easier to read the NEJM off the kindle screen than a computer screen.
Third, reading the NEJM off the kindle screen is almost as good as reading articles printed from the online journal...except, you eliminate the ink/tonor cost.
Fourth, the kindle saves the old editions on the device for you (creating a virtual library)
Fifth, the kindle will read the NEJM to you...by connecting into the speakers of your car stereo via a Coby cassette adapter. The kindle therefore allows doctors to transform commuting (driving) time into more CME time.
Sixth, doctors tend to be mobile and hard pressed for time--walking (running) throughout the hospital or from office to office. It would be a god send to have all the major journals available at one's fingertips on an easy to read platform. The kindle version of the NEJM is the first step toward this vision. To expand on this thought--having "Up to Date" or other medical info. review sites available on the kindle would greatly add to its appeal.
Disadvantage: Charts and graphs in the articles are difficult to read on the Kindle 2. When you zoom in on the charts and graphs by placing the cursor over them, they are much easier to read. If charts and graphs are very important to you, consider getting the Kindle DX, which reportedly makes charts and graphs much more readable.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great, but not perfect, May 19, 2009
This review is from: The New England Journal of Medicine (Kindle Edition)
I am a clinician whose primary area of practice is oncology. I am constantly looking for new and innovative ways to stay current with the medical literature. When I saw that the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) was available on the Kindle, I was ecstatic. The ability to have the NEJM delivered to me automatically, so I could peruse it at my leisure (and even have it read to me during my commute, as one previous reviewer pointed out) was very appealing. I own a Kindle v2, so my review is based on that platform.
Overall, the articles are easy to read, and suffer very little from being converted to Kindle format, with one notable exception: the graphics and tables come across horribly on the Kindle screen. Figures which show baseline demographics of comparator groups are unreadable, even when zoomed. Black and white photos may or may not come across well, depending on the size and quality of the photo. These may be solved with the Kindle DX, but for those of us who have already invested in Kindle hardware, I'm certain you will experience the same frustrations. Amazon, if you hope to continue to gain additional readership from the medical community, and gain additional medical journal offerings, I highly suggest that something be done to correct this flaw. With a normal magazine article, pictures are often a nice addition, but not absolutely necessary. With medical literature, the figures and photos often give a vast quantity of data that are not contained elsewhere in an article. In other words, if I can't see the figure clearly, I can't interpret whether the article I'm reading is a quality article, and what impact it should have on the way I practice. I plan to give my NEJM subscription a couple more weeks to see if graphic quality is consistently poor. If so, I will discontinue my Kindle subscription, as the NEJM is widely available electronically via other means.
Additionally, I mentioned that I was excited to have the Kindle read articles out loud while I was commuting to work. Unfortunately, due to the complex nature of medical terminology, the Kindle often butchers pronunciations, and stumbles over genetic information, abbreviations, etc. that are common in the medical literature. This makes articles read aloud via the Kindle almost incomprehensible. I much prefer to read articles the old fashioned way rather than have them read to me.
That being said, I do find that having the NEJM available on my Kindle has increased the number of articles from the Journal that I take a serious look at (as opposed to just glancing over). Also, I have started bringing my Kindle on rounds with me. It fits very nicely into my lab coat pocket, and makes a handy reference tool (not to mention the wow-factor from other clinicians when I pull it out).
Overall, 4 out of 5 stars for ease of use, portability, originality of concept, and wireless delivery. Fix the graphic issues, and I'd give it a 5/5 without hesitation.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kindle DX NEJM experience, June 17, 2009
This review is from: The New England Journal of Medicine (Kindle Edition)
On Kindle DX, most tables, figures and photos are fine, once the zoom function is used. Only the busiest tables/graphs are illegible. Fortunately, such tables/graphs are relatively infrequent and I enjoyed reading the latest NEJM on the Kindle DX, and most physicians have other ways to obtain these table/graphs if they need them. Yet, Amazon needs to find a way to overcome this problem if they are truly going to cater to the academic audience as they report that they are trying to do. Many textbooks have busy tables/graphs, and it may be difficult for faculty and students to get the hardcopy version of those tables.
One solution would be to have higher resolution versions of all Kindle purchases/subscriptions available on line to be accessed from a PC/MAC.
I cancelled my trial for the same reason I cancelled my print subscription a few years ago. I only did the trial to answer one of the earlier reviews questions regarding appearance on the DX. I am a pediatric endocrinologist, and most NEJM articles are too irrelevant to my field for me to regularly read the entire journal. For me, the NEJM free table of contents delivery to my e-mail that includes abstracts is sufficient for my purposes. Being in academic medicine, it is not difficult for me to obtain any full article on line when I need it. However, if I was in a more general specialty, or almost any internal medicine specialty, I would not have hesitated to subscribe to the Kindle version of the NEJM. I hope Amazon makes JCEM available.
One final comment. I do not understand why the Kindle versions of most newspapers, magazines and journals are as, or almost as expensive as the print versions. The baseline cost for the producers should be much less for electronic versions.
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