Friday, August 23, 2002
Palmtops in the Operating Room
Posted by marlof in "NEWS" @ 12:04 AM
http://makeashorterlink.com/?V2B325791
The New York Times has a nice article on the use of PDAs in the Miami Children's Hospital. Both doctors and nurses use handhelds to keep track of patient records, write drug prescriptions, read electronic reference books, and view multimedia presentations.
"When Dr. Redmond Burke became the chief of cardiac surgery at Miami Children's Hospital seven years ago, it was apparent to him that the records system was out of date. "I was frustrated that Federal Express could keep better track of a package than we could track patients," he recalled. "We were walking around with 5-by-7-inch index cards as the hospital database. They got lost. You couldn't access them. I wanted to have one hand on a sick baby and in the other hand, I wanted to hold that baby's information. That's where the hand-helds came in."
Of course safe keeping of records is very important when it comes to confidential information as patient records. "Using wireless organizers to link with servers also reduced the potential for confidentiality problems. Now the hand-helds act as dumb terminals; patient information is immediately sent to the servers for storage and the hand-helds' memories are cleared. Similarly, records viewed by doctors on their palmtops are never stored on the units."
Thanks to all the people sending in the link to this article.
The New York Times has a nice article on the use of PDAs in the Miami Children's Hospital. Both doctors and nurses use handhelds to keep track of patient records, write drug prescriptions, read electronic reference books, and view multimedia presentations.
"When Dr. Redmond Burke became the chief of cardiac surgery at Miami Children's Hospital seven years ago, it was apparent to him that the records system was out of date. "I was frustrated that Federal Express could keep better track of a package than we could track patients," he recalled. "We were walking around with 5-by-7-inch index cards as the hospital database. They got lost. You couldn't access them. I wanted to have one hand on a sick baby and in the other hand, I wanted to hold that baby's information. That's where the hand-helds came in."
Of course safe keeping of records is very important when it comes to confidential information as patient records. "Using wireless organizers to link with servers also reduced the potential for confidentiality problems. Now the hand-helds act as dumb terminals; patient information is immediately sent to the servers for storage and the hand-helds' memories are cleared. Similarly, records viewed by doctors on their palmtops are never stored on the units."
Thanks to all the people sending in the link to this article.
