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Personal Technology Brings Medical Information to Point of Care
The connected physician wears IT and carries IT
By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor
In the middle of the Iraqi desert, there are no medical references handy to consult when a soldier is down with pneumococcal pneumonia. But a U.S. Army doctor with a personal digital assistant (PDA) strapped to his belt can get instant access to information about recommended antibiotics, dosages and potential drug interactions.
“In the environment I was in, you couldn’t carry a bunch of books around with you,” said Robert Blankenship, MD, after a 50-week deployment with the 4th Infantry Division in Samara, Iraq. “You could be out in the middle of nowhere and still have the most recent information right at your fingertips. From time to time we would have Internet access, and I could synch my Palm to get all the new drug data and any FDA alerts.”
Dr. Blankenship is one of a growing group of connected physicians who have PCs at home and carry PDAs with them wherever they go. According to Forrester Research, a technology research company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 88 percent of MDs have a home PC, 48 percent spend one to four hours online per week for work-related reasons, and 40 percent own a PDA. In fact, physicians are five time as likely to carry a PDA than other consumers.
Pharmacopeias, reference books and medical calculators are the most popular medical applications for PDAs, but using a PDA for a quick reference look-up is just the beginning of what these handheld devices can do for the practice of medicine. As physicians climb the curve of technology adoption, they move from accessing information, to interacting with healthcare providers and patients, to transacting business with suppliers and insurers.
In the not-too-distant future, when the healthcare industry implements standards for electronic medical records (EMRs) and electronic prescribing, the connected physician will be more efficient thanks to portable information technology (IT) such as the tablet PC, and wearable devices such as a combination PDA-phone-pager.
Excerpt from "Personal Technology Brings Medical Information to Point of Care," ACEP Reference+Resource Guide 2004, pp. 14-19. Copyright 2004 American College of Emergency Physicians, Irving, Texas.
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