The Evolution of Handheld Device in Medical Care

The Goals

• Reduce Errors– Better care for patients– Lower Malpractice fees

• Increase Efficiency– See more patients– Reduce headcount– Reduce turn around time for claims

• Reduce paperwork• Even improve patient satisfaction

What are we Trying to Automate?

• MD interaction with Patient

• MD Access when not in the office

• Applications – – E-prescriptions– Schedule / Demographics– Medical Record / Charting– Charge Capture

The Newton

• Replace reference books– Drug Manuals– Infectious Disease reference

• Beginnings of patient record capture

• Store patient information (schedules, etc)

• Start of wireless use with Guppies

The Palm

• Proliferation of separate applications• Prescription writing• Medical record capture• Charge Capture• Many single use application show up

– MDEverywhere (Charge Capture on a Palm)– Virtmed - PrescriptionsInfra-red printing

The Palm++

• Symbol, etc

• Bar code module

• Wireless Access, but not well accepted

Over the Hump

• iPaq – Wireless LAN

• Sierra Cards (CDPD)

• Palm VII

• Realtime integration medical records

• Win CE with voice recording support

• Larger/brighter screens

Barriers to Physician adoption

• Infrastructure requirements

• Lots of “Noise’ in the market

• Integration with existing systems

• Battery power

• Security?

What does MDanywhere Do?

• Device agnostic – Avoid the tool belt approach

• Connected only world – will migrate to both pre-load of static pages and intermittently connected networks

• Full suite of applications• Same functionality on desktop and handheld• Internet access with encrypted links

What’s the Near Future?

• Mixed mode devices– iPaq with > local storage (driven by MP3 use)– Local store, with transparent sync.– Common device frameworks

• Specialty WinCE devices– Biometric support (fingerprint)– Wireless, larger screens

• Voice recognition/control• Industry ad-hoc standards

– RxHub