 | There has been widespread adoption of personal digital assistants (PDAs) within medicine in recent years. However, information on the prevalence and usage of these devices among radiologists is limited. A survey was designed and mailed to randomly selected members of the Radiological Society of North America to determine the percentage of PDA users, their use patterns, and the types of applications that they would like to see in the future. The use patterns of attending radiologists were compared with those of trainees (residents and fellows). Overall usage was also compared with the relevant findings in two surveys of internal medicine users.
|
|
|
Read more...
|
 | Pointsec, the global leader and the provider of the de facto standard for enterprise security software for laptop and desktop PCs, PDAs and smartphones, today announced it will provide endpoint security technology for the U.S. Army’s Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4). MC4 will work with Insight Public Sector, a leading provider of IT products and services for federal governmental divisions and agencies, including the United States Army, to deploy over 11,000 Windows Mobile-based HP Pocket PC handheld devices with Pointsec for Pocket PC encryption technology to its highly-trained medical staff. These devices will be used by Army medical professionals all over the world, especially in the combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
|
MC4 will work with Insight Public Sector, a leading provider of IT products and services for federal governmental divisions and agencies, including the United States Army, to deploy over 11,000 Windows Mobile-based HP Pocket PC handheld devices with Pointsec for Pocket PC encryption technology to its highly-trained medical staff. These devices will be used by army medical professionals all over the world, especially in the combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
|
|
Read more...
|
 PatientKeeper® announced that GE Healthcare has selected its mobile software technology. GE Healthcare will market and sell PatientKeeper software as Centricity® Physician Office Mobile™. PatientKeeper, a leading provider of mobile software solutions for healthcare, and GE Healthcare have partnered to offer tightly integrated mobile applications that will enable physicians to simultaneously view the patient's electronic medical record, use powerful clinical decision support tools, accurately record charges for medical treatments, and more – all with one mobile device. Centricity Mobile, which will be unveiled and demonstrated at the 2005 HIMSS Conference, February 13-17, Dallas, TX, will initially include charge capture, with other popular PatientKeeper applications being added over time. The new offering will be available to both new and existing customers.
Physicians own more technology (e.g., PDAs and smartphones) and go online more often than do other consumers. According to a North American Benchmark Study by Forrester Research, physicians are five times as likely to carry a personal digital assistant, such as a Palm OS or PocketPC device, than are typical consumers. Gartner, Inc. estimates that one in two doctors use PDAs. |
|
HP has launched a new affiliate program for members of Pri-Med, a continuing medical education organization that offers clinicians the best available patient care practices enabled by current advances in research, treatment protocols and technology. Announced at the 2005 Pri-Med Southwest Conference and Exhibition, the programme allows Pri-Med members to take advantage of discounted pricing on HP commercial products. As a result, health professionals affiliated with Pri-Med can enjoy savings of up to 10 percent on HP products, including printers, notebooks, desktop PCs, storage systems, servers, tablet PCs, and HP iPAQ Pocket PCs. |
Emergency room physicians are avoiding a range of medical errors using personal digital assistants (PDAs), according to a new survey conducted by MedAmerica Mutual, a physician-directed, liability insurer that covers emergency physicians and their medical groups.
Approximately 65 percent of respondents said that while using a PDA, they had avoided a dosing error, while 58 percent noted a dosing frequency error, 25 percent a drug error, 24 percent a therapeutic error and 18 percent another type of error.
The survey was conducted over the course of 2003 - 2004 with MedAmerica's insured physicians in an ongoing effort to assess the impact of the Mutual's support of handheld technology. In 2001, the insurer provided its physicians with PDAs bundled with Epocrates Rx Pro drug reference software. Nearly 500 PDAs were distributed.
Click here for the full press release in Microsoft Word format
|
The National Library of Medicine (NLM), a component of the National Institutes of Health, has announced the release of a PDA software tool designed to help first responders when they arrive at a hazardous material (Hazmat) incident, such as a chemical spill.
WISER (Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders) provides the emergency responder with critical information on hazardous substances, including physical characteristics, human health data, and containment and suppression information. Employing the unique characteristics of a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), WISER is customized for easy navigation and quick access to key information required by first responders. To aid decision making, users can specify the role they are currently performing at the scene of an incident, and WISER organizes the critical information in a sequence most relevant to a first responder on-the-scene, a Hazmat specialist, or an emergency medical specialist (EMS).
The operational versions of WISER for Palm OS and for Pocket PC are now available without charge for downloading to users' PDAs at http://wiser.nlm.nih.gov. More than 1700 copies of the WISER software have been requested and downloaded. A desktop version will be available later this spring, and a web-based version is also being developed. |
 The Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, one of the world's foremost centers for medical and scientific training, has selected PatientKeeper® as its mobile software platform. A group of two hundred physicians in the department of medicine is using PatientKeeper Charge Capture™ to streamline and improve the billing process. The mobile initiative will be funded from the return-on-investment (ROI) from this group of physicians.
"Convenience and ease of use for our physicians are important issues for us," said Paul Klotman, M.D., chairman of the Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "The user interface on the PatientKeeper system is extremely intuitive and clearly designed to suit the doctor's daily workflow. It's a great time-saver to download a patient list as you're heading in for morning rounds and then quickly and easily record services right after seeing a patient." |
 Unbound Medicine, a leader in knowledge management solutions for healthcare, today introduced a wireless medical resource for physicians and other healthcare professionals. In partnership with Merck & Co., Inc., Unbound Medicine now gives clinicians 24-hour access to select medical information from the MerckMedicus internet site using their wireless Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), Blackberry, or smartphone.
“We are pleased to extend our partnership with Merck to deliver trusted medical information to the point of need,” said William Detmer, MD, president and CEO of Unbound Medicine. “As physicians are constantly on the go during the average day, the new wireless MerckMedicus will help them find answers when questions arise and stay abreast of the latest advances in medicine.”
Using Unbound Medicine’s powerful mobile platform, current medical resources can be accessed using a wireless internet connection to www.merckmedicus.com, including: The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, MEDLINE Journal abstracts, Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests, and Reuters Medical News. The Personal Search Assistant allows clinicians to query more than 11 million medical articles in the MEDLINE database from their handheld or wireless device in real-time without access fees or advertising content.
|
|
