The use of handhelds in medicine has been a hot topic over the last few years. Docs jumped on the PDA band wagon with the original Palms; their size was just about perfect for their white coats.
Palm pilots and other hand-held computers were originally designed as personal organizers but they are becoming increasingly popular with doctors, medical students and even patients to improve the quality of care and safety.
"The most commonly used clinical application is drug reference, so far. But it has gone beyond just looking up drugs and dosages and running interaction checks," Dr Daniel Baumgart, of the Charite Medical School of the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, said in an interview.
While drug references are good, the "killer app" would be a "paperless chart" that could be accessed at the bedside, by multiple providers simultaneusly. Add in X-rays, drug interactions, and lab data, and this has some real potential to improve patient care, as well as efficiency and cost savings. While this was tried in a few places, this was before WiFi networks were affordable. Now that the hardware has caught up, there is some real potential for deployment here. At the very least, the nurses won't have so much trouble reading the doc's handwriting!
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