Latest News
Updated:
04/21/2003
Tablet
PC Summit-May 19, 2003
Manufacturers
experiment with Tablet PCs
Confessions
of a Tablet PC Note Taker: Part I
eWEEK
Excellence Awards: Desktop & Handheld Hardware
Note-taking
goes high tech
Fujitsu
Stylistic is fundamentally right
Reason
to buy a Tablet?
Tablet
PCs: What's The Big Deal?
Tablet
PC Secrets Revealed
A
business case for Tablet PCs
Tablet
PC stops files from blowing away
Tablet
PCs, the Next Generation
Intel
Puts Mucscle Behind Centrino Mobile Agenda
Acer
America Selects Mobility Panasonic
Introduces World's Most Connected Convertible Tablet PCs
Tablet
Software Packages Get Graphic
Toting
a Tablet PC to Sales Meetings
What
tablets need to succeed
Tablet PCs and other forms of mobile computing have been used in the healthcare industry for several years according to Carol Sliwa in an article in Computerworld written on November 19, 2001:
"Gary Steinkamp, president of Phoenix-based The Health Source Inc., which sells software and computers to doctors, small clinics and hospitals, said he's seeing huge interest in Tablet PCs from health care professionals. "In my industry, electronic medical records are now the buzz," he said. "They want to get to an electronic, paperless office." Doctors want to be able to jot down patient notes at their offices or at the hospital and not have to re-enter the information into their computers, Steinkamp said. They also want to be able to take their computers home and access the network to view medical records when they're on call, he added."
NetReturn, LLC, of Fairfield, Connecticut, produces ExpertSeller. ExpertSeller is a web-based sales force automation system that serves both small and large enterprises. U.S. Surgical (USS), a division of Tyco, develops, manufactures and markets a line of surgical wound closure products and advanced surgical products to hospitals throughout the world. USS's advanced surgical products target numerous surgical specialties including: spinal orthopedics, vascular therapies, urology, and breast care. U.S. Surgical has a sales force of approximately 400 people who sell products from minimally invasive surgical tools, staplers, cancer detection to breast care tools to hospitals. Although each member of the sales force often has a laptop with a sales force automation application installed, sales representatives are often required to go into the operating rooms of hospitals. If laptops are not banned from operating rooms due to sensitive hospital equipment, they are often too bulky and inefficient to access. Additionally, sales representatives are hindered by hospitals lack of "safe places" to keep equipment, hence many laptops disappear when left unguarded. U.S. Surgical sought a solution that would allow its' sales force to capture and access sales information efficiently and quickly regardless of where they were doing business. U.S. Surgical hired a team of consultants from NetReturn to help solve their Sales Force Automation challenge. ExpertSeller provides users with access to a wide variety of corporate data, including sales, product, compensation and quota information. It provides integration with enterprise resource planning packages such as SAP, and contract and pricing software such as Trilogy. ExpertSeller uses AvantGo M- Business Server to integrate seamlessly with Palm OS or Windows CE mobile devices. With AvantGo Enterprise, users can now download any information from the corporate intranet directly to their mobile device, as well as information such as itineraries, product information, account data and pricing information. Users can also subscribe to various reports generated from ExpertSeller's reporting application, ExpertVisa, a Web-based enterprise reporting tool that allows developers to rapidly create and deliver reports and data interfaces to end-users, both on-line and synchronized via a handheld device, using a simple XML scripting language. These reports can be generated from data in any database stored anywhere in the company. In addition, sales representatives can now interact with data in wireless or offline mode, using existing technology from AvantGo.
Information technology is benefiting healthcare in several areas. Medical researchers are establishing networks, sharing up-to-date information and creating workflows in different geographic locations. Technology is helping health administrators to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and communicate better with employers and suppliers, adapting rapidly to a highly-regulated and increasingly competitive environment. Physicians are embracing IT so that they can transmit and share mission-critical information such as x-rays, CT scans, laboratory tests, and patient records across healthcare boundaries at any time and at point of care. They are also seeing the benefits of intranets, extranets, and the Internet as tools for prescription and prevention, such sending electronic lab test results or reminders to patients.
Doctors are beginning to turn to technology to deal with inefficient paper-based hospital systems, ever-expanding medical knowledge, and patients arriving with Web site printouts about their condition. The full benefits of e-healthcare will be realized when there is widespread acceptance of IT among doctors. Processing power is being packed into new devices such as PDAs, Pocket PCs and Tablet PCs. These are enabling healthcare professionals to create or refill existing prescriptions, access laboratory test results, dictate patient notes, and even capture photos of a patient's condition and e-mail them to a colleague for a second opinion.
Installing and wiring workstations in different areas of a hospital or medical practice is expensive and disruptive. Wireless devices, on the other hand, tend to be less expensive than PCs and can be used at every bedside. Many tasks once done with pen and paper can also be handled more efficiently with mobile devices. A hospital physician can examine a patient, tap their notes into a Tablet PC and send a medication order off to the hospital pharmacy via a wireless local area network. Even in an intensive care unit, computers can be connected but unfettered.
Each year pharmacies in the U.S. make 150 million calls to doctors to clarify confusing prescriptions. Illegible handwritten prescriptions and transcription errors can result in patients getting the wrong drug, the wrong dose, or a drug that interacts badly with another drug the patient is already taking. When doctors reach for technology, they reduce paperwork and there is much less chance of medical errors and misplaced records.
In South Dakota, housebound patients are visited by traveling clinicians, who use hand-held devices to transmit the patients data instantly back to the office. This dovetailing of healthcare and technology saves paper and the time it takes to fill out forms as well as cutting back considerably on travel time, meaning more clinicians can visit more patients at less expense.
MacNeal Health Network serves over 110,000 patients in the Chicago area. Over 200 caregivers in the more than 30 MacNeal healthcare facilities rely on Stylistic pen computers from Fujitsu to manage patients' records. MacNeal's mobile computing system solution consists of Stylistic 1200 pen computers equipped with Azron, Inc.'s electronic medical records (EMR) software and Breezecom's wireless LAN adapter cards. This implementation allows the healthcare workers to interact with patients and view up-to-date information from any location within the company's facilities, including operating rooms.
Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the largest nonprofit home healthcare organization in the United States, regularly sends its clinicians, registered nurses and rehabilitation therapists to the homes of approximately 23,000 patients a week-roughly 2.3 million visits a year. The group's 1,500 nurses and 500 rehab therapists provide skilled care, rehabilitation therapy, mental health services and supportive care to patients in their homes. VNSNY depends on a mobile computing system solution based on high-performance pen tablet computers from Fujitsu. The system, which uses dial-up data links and software developed in-house by VNSNY, enables the organization to keep information flowing among nurses, doctors and clinics.
Uses of Tablet PCs in Healthcare
More efficient communication. Download appointment schedules.
Transmit and access critical information such as x-rays, CT scans, test results and patient records.
Scan bar codes to positively identify patients
Internet, extranet and intranet access.
Refill prescriptions and reduce errors due to illegible handwriting. Monitors dangerous drug contraindications.
Dictate patient notes.
Capture photos of patient's condition and transmit them to colleague for second opinion.
Eliminate expensive hard wiring of computer workstations throughout hospital.
Access to information when visiting housebound patients.
Improves patient privacy in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
Tracks billing data and charge captures.
Tracks insurance information.