Doctors on the go - Wireless

Communications News,  Nov, 2002  

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Residents and third- and fourth-year medical students at Columbus' autonomous Ohio State University (OSU) Medical Center are equipped with Palm handhelds to advance their productivity. The devices enable access to applications, including drug interaction software, medical calculators, patient medical records, applications relevant to completing rounds and documents such as phone lists. Medical students access patient information at all times, which improves their efficiency, and frees up their time to devote to patient care.

There was a great risk, however, if outdated information was ever used in place of the most current hospital data. Since the center operates five hospitals and 50 outreach sites with 800 attending physicians and 500 residents, and more than 800 medical students receive their training at these facilities, providing care to approximately 33,000 inpatients and 625,000 outpatients yearly, that risk had to be eliminated.

The staff searched for a solution that would keep information up-to-date, and that users could update devices themselves. The question being asked by Phil Skinner, director of the OSU Medical Center's enterprise services, was, "How would we update the software without having to touch 1,600 Palms every time?"

Finally, XcelleNet's mobile infrastructure solution, Afaria, was used for all 1,600 devices, enabling the deployment of software and synchronization of hospital and patient data. First deployed were 1,000 Palm M505 devices at a cost of $400,000 for hardware, software and services, as well as training on devices and software applications. Then, another 600 Palm M515s were deployed.

"Now, residents take their Palms to the nurse's station and use the infrared port to sync," Skinner says. "The syncing process starts immediately, updating a device's personalized information in less than two minutes and providing users with their patient list and their patients' medical history for the past 48 hours.

"If we have software updates, the solution pushes a new version onto the devices," says Skinner. Clarinet infrared devices are used to help perform the syncing functionality. The solution recognizes different user profiles, tailoring updates to each specific user group.

In addition, the solution's device-management features allow the medical center's IT department to know who has which device, which software is licensed to each device and how much memory is remaining--a simple way for IT to track inventory. IT staff also can diagnose and treat a variety of problems from one central location. By examining logs via a Web browser, help desk personnel can verify whether the current users' systems meet the upgrade requirements and if the upgrades are necessary.

For the future, the center plans to make the synchronization process occur in real time by wirelessly enabling the devices. "Then, if a patient's medical test results are out of the norm, the resident would be alerted to the fact immediately," says Skinner.

For more information from XcelleNet: www.rsleads.com/211cn-265

COPYRIGHT 2002 Nelson Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group