HealthAmigo and AvantGo push health info out to PDAs

HealthAmigo, a company providing medical data over the Web and mobile Internet, and AvantGo, a firm providing wireless information and services, have joined forces to launch HealthAmigo's Pocket Doctor service for PDAs. While the service is available only over WAP-enabled phones, the two companies plan to use the higher memory and storage capacity of PDAs to make Pocket Doctor available on both the Palm OS and Windows CE platforms.

The Health-E-Ref application, for example, allows users to download an entire medical encyclopedia to their PDAs, and DoctorQ, the other service targeted for the initial PDA platform launch, outlines questions that patients should ask their doctors in specific situations. HealthAmigo is targeting the global healthcare consumer market and will make Pocket Doctor available in multiple languages, according to Rob Wilson, managing director.