Tablet PC - Sandbox (Chit Chat)Discuss anything about the Tablet PC that doesn't fit into the other categories. It's the closest to a free for all. But keep it friendly! Plus don't forget to post about yourself in the Introductions forums.
But doctors themselves have been a major obstacle to putting such systems in place. "Many of the systems that were available in the early days seemed to doctors to be slower and more cumbersome than simply handwriting a prescription," says Suzanne Delbanco, executive director of the Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates computerized prescribing. Just last year Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center delayed a computerized prescribing system because doctors protested it was too time-consuming. For a system to work, physicians must embrace it. "If it's not going to make life easier," Chief Information Officer Stettheimer says, "I don't want to put it out there."
That's where Wi-Fi could help. "It's indispensable," says Mark Maldia, an internist who has worked at St. Vincent's since last July. At another hospital he might spend an hour running from floor to floor to get an X-ray. Now he can download it in five minutes. Lab results come across as soon as they're ready, not hours later. And with his tablet PC, Maldia can show patients images of their broken bones or tumors. He can even compare new images to old ones. In March, Maldia became one of the first doctors at St. Vincent's to begin prescribing drugs by computer. His verdict? "It could be the biggest time-saver yet."
The prescribing system was designed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, widely recognized as a leader in developing systems to keep errors from reaching patients. The system, now sold by McKesson, does more than simply double-check for allergies and adverse drug interactions. It guides doctors in choosing treatments. In high-pressure settings like the emergency room, it provides an electronic checklist for stressed physicians to follow. All of this can be done with a Wi-Fi-enabled computer. "If you're in a hospital, and you're in a situation where you're going from one patient to the next," says William Stead, director of the Informatics Center at Vanderbilt, "it's obviously easier to have something like a wireless laptop."
06-17-2004, 10:26 AM
Similar Threads 
