What am I doing with tabbles? Finding it a lot easier to search through my references, for one thing…

Radiology involves two main processes: recognizing a pattern from a set of images, and then coming up with a list of diagnoses that includes the most likely explanations for that pattern. Tabbles can’t do anything about the first, and it doesn’t do the second very well either, but tabbles does let me find out what I need to know quickly so my job is made easier.

The first thing I did with tabbles was to tag a couple hundred of my most frequently used differential diagnosis lists. Each list is for a particular imaging pattern ("basal lung fibrosis", for instance), and might contain anywhere from 3 to 20 possible diagnoses/diseases associated with that pattern. Each list is sorted into a body system (like chest), and then into a subsystem (lung). Each diagnosis that shows up in a list is given a tag. Many of these diagnoses affect a whole bunch of body systems or present in many different ways, so the disease tags can show up in dozens of lists. Then I tagged and sorted all my reference papers with the same system. Some of the papers contain descriptions of a dozen diseases (none of which might be mentioned in the title) and hold obscure info that is really handy to have – if you can find it. As you might imagine, the associations are quite complex and with about 400 files I have thousands of tags and links.

So now I can just type in a disease or finding, and I can easily find my relevant lists, papers, notes, anatomy cheat sheets, procedure guides, web refs etc. I can sort the files by type, year published, relative importance, or even by milligrams of rhubarb if I really wanted to… It’s a lot easier to find obscure facts to test students with (while appearing to be some sort of genius for knowing those facts). Even when I can’t recall where I put it, I can find that needle in my haystack of medical references.

The beauty of tabbles lies in the ease of its file tagging interface, and then helping you find that file later without having to recall specifics. Until I stumbled onto tabbles, I had no way of cross-referencing my files, and as the links multiplied I was beginning to lose track of their various associations. No more duplicated files, lost links, forgotten gems, or ploughing through Google desktop. Tabbles auto-tagging and one-click tagging features makes organizing your data about as simple as it can be. The search engine is both fast and really easy to use. Tabbles lets me concentrate on the important tasks at hand, helps me find what I need quickly, and has made my laptop reference library the object of much envy.

So there you go. Positive review/reference and vague description of filing system/user pattern all in one. Thanks again for the great product.