Hospitals, med schools inspire physician adoption of handhelds

Efficiency and cost concerns push popularity

While handhelds are not yet as commonplace in the hospital as thermometers and blood pressure monitors, they are there, and increasingly in force. Wake Forest University School of Medicine now gives all third-year medical students an IBM WorkPad (IBM’s version of the Palm) as they begin their clinical clerkships, reports Johannes Boehme, associate dean of academic computing. That’s 115 doctors-in-training who will enter their practices using a handheld right from the start.

One way these student docs are using WorkPads is to track the kinds and number of medical procedures, such as caesarean deliveries, they participate in. Such record-keeping is required for their accreditation as physicians. Also on the device is a pharmaceutical reference guide, as well as more common scheduling and address book functions. E-mail functionality will be added during the next year.

Dan Glessner, director of enterprise marketing at Palm, believes that handhelds are so well suited to medical applications that medical training will change to accommodate them. Glessner predicts, for instance, that much of the information students now memorize can be referenced from a handheld.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is going heavily toward the Palm, with an estimated 200 physicians carrying wireless Palm VIIs and an additional uncounted number using other Palm models. The use of the Palms, said Dr. Ray Duncan, director of architecture and technology for Cedars-Sinai, has so far been rather ad hoc.

“This was an unfunded project that we originally did for fun,” he said. “The physicians who want to use the wireless apps have to buy the Palm VIIs out of their own budgets.”

Cedars-Sinai physicians use the Palms mainly for remote access to medical records and other data stored at the hospital, and Duncan said the main benefit of the Palm is instant access to clinical information. The hospital is expected to supply Palms to all of its interns and residents next year as part of a formal program.