Jerry Fahrni

Category: Mobile Computing

  • The digital peripheral brain

    The Palmdoc Chronicles:” I’ve had a Palm Pre for about 2 months now and I can declare that the device has seen tremendous improvement with firmware updates (pushed OTA) and a steadily increasing amount of useful applications in the Palm App Catalog and the unofficial Homebrew scene.

    How usable is it as an smartphone for doctors? Well I can say it pretty much does replace your old PalmOS device as it is. One of the cool features of the old Palm PDAs is the ability to keep snippets of information in the Memos (Notes) in various categories for instant recall. These notes may be protocols, clinical pearls or practically any bits of information which you want to look up while rounding for instance.

    WebOS’ builtin “post-it” type Memos is ok if you are keeping about 10-20 notes but pretty useless if you are talking about 300-500 notes or more. There are several solutions at hand which overcome this limitation.”

    The blog goes on to describe a few applications that can be used to create a peripheral brain out of the Palm Pre smartphone. One of these applications is the ever popular Evernote, which I use daily on my tablet PC as well as my Droid.

    The information presented at the Palmdoc Chronicles isn’t restricted to the Palm WebOS. The iPhone, Motorola DROID, RIM BlackBerry devices, and a host of other smartphones are capable of storing memos, notes, PDFs and numerous other forms of information documentation.

    The idea of using a PDA as a peripheral brain isn’t new. Felkey and Fox 1 were talking about it back in 2002 when the precursor to the Palm WebOS was popular among healthcare professionals. It’s interesting how the idea is as good today as it was nearly a decade ago.

    1. Felkey BG, Fox BI. PDA interface: Creating the Digital Peripheral Brain. Hosp Pharm. 2002; 37:1222-1224

  • Epic launches Haiku, an iPhone EHR application

    “After three months of rumors, details surrounding Epic Systems’ partnership with Apple for a mobile phone-based electronic health record (EHR) application have come to light: Just a few days ago, Epic System’s iPhone application, called Haiku, became available on Apple’s AppStore. Haiku provides authorized clinical users of Epic’s Electronic Health Record with secure access to clinic schedules, hospital patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes. Haiku also supports dictation and In Basket access. Haiku works on both the iPhone and iPod touch,” according to the app’s description on the AppStore.”

    This is a very interesting turn of events as rumors regarding Apples new tablet entering the healthcare arena have been swirling around the internet. Could Haiku be the precursor to what we’ll see with the Apple tablet? I sure hope so.

    Source

  • Can the Apple tablet, i.e. the iSlate, resurrect interest for tablets in healthcare?

    I read an interesting blog today. In the blog the author states that:

    An Apple tablet would be the ultimate UI for electronic medical records. With a touch-screen display like the iPhone, using the EMR during an encounter would be simplified. For example, selecting an evaluation and management (E&M) code could be as easy as “dialing in” the code with a swipe of a finger.

    Using the iPhone’s intelligent keyboard technology, the device could have a very sophisticated automatic coding tool. Some EMRs can already auto-generate E&M codes based on information collected during the patient encounter. Combine this with the iPhone’s keyboard word suggestion tool, and physicians could rapidly select codes. Additionally, just as the iPhone adapts its keys and layout for different applications, the Mac Tablet could display a unique keyboard setting for each EMR function.

    Using iPhone speech recognition technology, physicians could dictate directly into an EMR to create notes, draft narrative reports or generate custom patient instructions. Mac design programs could be repurposed to make a really slick tablet drawing tool for anatomical diagrams that illustrate procedures and diagnoses.

    There is no question that I think tablets are underutilized in healthcare. I have pushed them into the hands of pharmacists at my facility and have tried various different things to encourage their use. While I would love to see tablet computers adopted in mass among healthcare systems, I just don’t think it’s in the cards for the iSlate for several reasons.
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  • Reading pharmacy literature on the go

    Like many pharmacists I read a lot of journal articles. This is especially true because of the dual role I play at my hospital. It’s not uncommon for me to read a couple of articles a day through the week and a few more thrown in on the weekend. The articles come from various medical and technology journals that I regularly visit plus the occasional article recommended by a friend or colleague. I still receive some journals in hard copy, but many now arrive electronically. Because I look into a computer screen 12-14 hours a day, I’m not particularly fond of reading articles on my laptop or tablet pc; it gives me a headache. As I’ve said many times, looking at a normal LCD monitor is like looking into a flashlight. Instead of reading PDFs on my computer I print them out and take them with me wherever I go (I can hear the collective moan from the conservationists in the crowd; sorry). This kind of defeats the purpose of having electronic documentation and certainly isn’t very “green”. With that said, advances in e-ink technology and e-reading devices may change my approach.

    I’ve been waiting for an e-reader that will allow me to read PDF files without having to zoom in and out or dance around the screen. I’ve tried reading on my Droid and my iPod Touch, and while possible, I wouldn’t want to do it for an extended period of time. It’s just not convenient.

    The Kindle DX was the first e-reader to hit the market with a screen big enough to accommodate my needs, and it was my front runner for quite a while. However, before dropping $500 on the DX I wanted to see some of the new devices that have been “on their way” since early 2009. Some of these devices are listed below.

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  • Looks like there is at least a little interest in Android and pharmacy

    I happened to check some statistics on my website this morning and found that the top searchpharases that brought people to my site over the weekend were related to the Droid and Lexi-comp (image below). I find this very interesting as well as encouraging.

  • Impact of Handheld Technology on Hospital Practice

    The Impact of Mobile Handheld Technology on Hospital Physicians’ Work Practices and Patient Care: A Systematic Review1

    The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
    Mirela Prgomet, Andrew Georgiou, Johanna I Westbrook

    Abstract

    The substantial growth in mobile handheld technologies has heralded the opportunity to provide physicians with access to information, resources, and people at the right time and place. But is this technology delivering the benefits to workflow and patient care promised by increased mobility? The authors conducted a systematic review to examine evidence regarding the impact of mobile handheld technology on hospital physicians’ work practices and patient care, focusing on quantification of the espoused virtues of mobile technologies. The authors identified thirteen studies that demonstrated the ability of personal digital assistants (PDAs) to positively impact on areas of rapid response, error prevention, and data management and accessibility. The use of PDAs demonstrates the greatest benefits in contexts where time is a critical factor and a rapid response crucial. However, the extent to which these devices improved outcomes and workflow efficiencies because of their mobility was largely absent from the literature. The paucity of evidence calls for much needed future research that asks explicit questions about the impact the mobility of devices has on work practices and outcomes.

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  • New medical tablet from Sanwell offers RFID, barcode scanner

    Samwell has introduced a tablet PC designed specifically for the medical industry. The tablet is dubbed the MCA9 and offers a 1.6GHz Atom processor, a two megapixel camera, a RFID reader and optional bar code scanner, and an 8.9-inch TFT-LCD touch screen that is readable in sunlight.

    According to Samwell: “designed for medical application, the ability for data capture, record and transmission is highly valued. The built-in 2-megapixel camera is centrally mounted on the backside. The 1D/2D Barcode Scanner and 13.56 RFID reader support electronic medication administration records, reliable patient identification, and medical tracking.”

    I’m skeptical of tablets with built in bar code scanners designed for “medical application”. The Motion Computing C5 tablet has a similar design. Our facility trialed a C5 tablet earlier this year and nurses found it difficult to use and too heavy to carry for extended periods. The two megapixel camera and small screen may also present a problem for documentation and viewing patient data.

  • Are smartphones a viable platform for pharmacy practice?

    It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of tablet PCs. In fact, I can’t imagine life without one. The reason why acute care pharmacists haven’t adopted the tablet PC platform escapes me. My complete opinion on the matter can be found here.

    With the growing need for real-time access to patient data it no longer makes sense to be anchored to a desktop PC at the point-of-care. Couple this with the rapid growth of portable technology and you have a rare opportunity to develop a mobile pharmacy practice in the acute care setting. Whether that model will utilize tablet PCs, UMPCs, WebStations, netbooks or other mobile device remains to be seen.
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  • Dual screen laptops are pretty cool

    When I first heard of the concept of a dual screen laptop my initial thought was that it was a ridiculous idea. Then I spent a little time researching the product and have changed opinion. Now I’d like to put my hands on one.

    The Kohjinsha DZ dual-screen laptop is much smaller then I expected, which is a good thing. The device offers two 10.1” screens, giving you some nice screen real estate when both are open. Additional features include biometric fingerprint identification, 1.3 megapixel webcam, up to 4 GB RAM, built in wireless, a 3-in-1 media slot and Windows 7 Home Premium.
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  • Lexi-Comp medical references for the Droid

    Recently I was fortunate enough to be a beta tester for the new Android version of Lexi-Comp’s suite of medical information software. I was very excited for the opportunity as I’ve been using what I would consider inferior drug information resources since purchasing my Droid about a month ago. The installation was a problem initially as the databases wouldn’t install directly to the microSD card on the Droid. As you can imagine, the databases are large and immediately filled up the physical memory on the device. Within a couple of weeks of reporting the problem to Lexi-Comp they had corrected the issue and sent me a new build that installed seamlessly.
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