As you know, I've recently purchased an iPad to use for rounding on patients. I described my first hospitalist rounding experience using my iPhone. Then, I described how I dramatically increased the efficiency of hospital rounds using my iPad.
Using an iPad and iPhone App called Clinical Xpert, Happy's hospital has been able to aggregate about 90% of the medical information I need on a daily basis to make my medical decisions in the standing position. Interestingly, one of the digital data points intentionally left out of the application was digital nursing documentation prose. As I've said before, I don't read nursing documentation prose because I don't find any of it helpful for making my medical decisions on patient care. Nurses document for nurses and the hospital. It's just not helpful for hospitalist care. Ever. I'll get all the pertinent nursing information I need talking with the nurse and leave their documentation for the lawyers and the hospital billing people to worry about. Because that's what it's all about. It's no different than my medical documentation.
What Clinical Xpert and iPad have done is present data to me in a format that rapidly improves my efficiency by meshing well with my work flow. But we are no where near where we could be, yet. Not even close. That day is coming. Touch screens are the future. One day, I can only hope that future generations of touch screen technology will be flately embedded in every patient room or work station near the room for immediate and direct access to medical decision making data points.
One day, that program will allow for hand writing to type script technology so doctors can write or audio dictate their notes and convert them immediately into type text that automatically enters into the EMR and can be data mined. We already have an iPad app for the immediate audio transcription. It's called Dragon. Someday, we will have physician order entry (POE) that will make doctors send hand written orders to the grave once and for all. And they are going to love it. It's all about work flow and what's coming is a revolution in the medical IT for doctors. POE is the Holy Grail. POE on touch screen platforms will seamlessly drive quality and safety initiatives and the doctors won't even know it. No more complaining. The future is coming and hopefully fast. Stat xrays will no longer require anything other than talking into your iPad or touching the the order on a touch screen embedded monitor. You can even do it from home.
One day this touch screen technology will allow the individual doctor to have the data that's important to them presented in a way they choose for it to be presented using tagging technology that can identify who is standing near the screen. Is the hospitalist standing there? Get them all the lab first. Is it the surgeon? Show them I/Os and JP drain output. It will show whatever you want it to show. It's fully customizable and operational from the second you walk up to the screen. And it's all presented on one screen.
One day this touch screen technology will allow multiple platforms to be presented simultaneously. If you have ten hospital programs running different aspects of patient care (lab, micro, rad, notes, etc), all programs could be open at the same time, on the same screen and presented to the doc, nurse, PT , RT or the cleaning lady however they wanted it presented.
If you're wondering what's possible, today, watch this 2006 TED video by Jeff Han describing the incredible applications for his cheap scalable multi touch technology. (video)
Also check out this incredible TED video from 2007 about changing the way we view our applications and allowing multiple applications to be viewed simultaneously. Imagine being able to see volumes of patient information neatly organized all on one touch screen interface.
Also check out this incredible TED video from 2007 about changing the way we view our applications and allowing multiple applications to be viewed simultaneously. Imagine being able to see volumes of patient information neatly organized all on one touch screen interface.
This is the future. In just a few short years, I think I'm going to look back at the iPad and laugh at what I thought was incredible. Because what the iPad touch screen technology can do today is but a fraction of what we will be doing tomorrow in the hospital. That means, as a hospitalist I can rapidly increase my hospitalist efficiency and productivity and quality. I hope vendors are paying attention because touch screen technology is changing everything. Today.
Successful software implementation starts with choosing the right system. This checklist contains over 50 of the most important features to look for when evaluating:
- electronic medical records
- medical billing software
- scheduling software
- technology, security and certifications
Other useful information is available at my EHR Resource Center. LINK TO E/M POCKET REFERENCE CARD POST
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