In the Philly area on April 3rd?  If so - make sure and take the time to visit the Radnor Hotel.  John Hill will be there with his company, Allegiance Technology,  for a demonstration of Electronic Medical Records, Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition and Tablet PCs.

Can't beat it - ANY time to sit and get your hands on a Tablet PC and listen to a good presentation on the benefits is some time well spent!!

Allegiance Technology Sponsors EMR, Voice Recognition and Tablet PC Seminar

Join us on Thursday, April 3^rd from 7-8:30pm for a demonstration of Electronic Medical Records, Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition and Tablet PCs. Paul Logan, CRNP will be demonstrating all three of these technologies.

If you haven’t already bought an EMR, you’re probably thinking about it. This presentation will show how you can:

Them doctors that are roaming around in the hills of Tenneessee are going to be takin' along some newfangled Tablet PC's with 'em while making their travels.

Those doctors are going to be taking part in a study by The Bureau of TennCare and Shared Health’s HIE pilot program that just started in March.    And - Given the choice - 49 out of 50 doctors opted for the Tablet PC!

Physicians receive the equipment, training and support for free. They also gain access to a medication database, prescription histories, notification of TennCare’s and other payers’ formularies, and alerts about potential adverse drug interactions, among other features, according to Shared Health.

We'll see how it goes in June when the pilot ends - hope it goes well for all involved!

(Disclaimer: I am originally from Tenn - so I can make fun :) )

The last time my daughter, Maggie, was in Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, Motion Computing Tablet PCs were easily seen being used on nursing stations and in patient rooms. That was two and a half years ago.

This weekend, Maggie was back at Children's Hospital  at Memorial Hospital, which is a whole different story. In between waiting for doctors and trying to pass time, I began looking for those same LE1700 Tablet PCs I spotted several years ago. I couldn't believe what I saw when I finally found them. They were locked down with Kensington Locks, with the pens gone, in docking stations underneath some nursing stations located next to patient rooms - pretty apparent that they were not to be removed. They had been relegated to just powering external monitors at a nurses station, clearly no longer being used for what they were designed for. I asked a nurse if they used them as Tablet PCs any longer, and she said no. They found the pen, what she called a "Magna Doodle thing", to be difficult to use, and found the lack of a keyboard to be frustrating. On the main nursing stations, they were using desktop pcs.

I can't tell you how hard it is to pass that station on the way to my daughter's room....There is another station just like it down the hall, that I try to avoid, because of the mere pain it brings my heart.....I just can't take it.

Knowing the power of getting tablet technology in to the hands of prospective customers, iMedica has announced their "Take A Tablet" program geared toward getting their software and hardware solutions in the hands of physicians.

iMedica Corporation, a leading developer of healthcare software solutions for physician practices, announced today a new program that equips physicians with a tablet PC loaded with iMedica's Patient Relationship Manager (PRM), a single-application Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management (PM) solution, for them to test for a week.

iMedica's "Take a Tablet" program allows physicians to bypass the often costly, time-consuming guessing game of evaluating EHR and PM systems. The program is simple - once a physician practice is pre-qualified, an iMedica representative personally delivers a tablet PC and then trains the physician to use the iMedica PRM, which is already installed on the tablet PC. The physician can evaluate iMedica PRM for a week.

The big conference right now for IT and healthcare is the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMMS).

Making a big splash at HIMMS is Motion Computing, showcasing their C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant. When I was at St. Louis Children's Hospital this past week, several doctors and staff made mention of the C5, although I don't remember seeing one in use.

Motion Computing®, a leader in mobile computing and wireless communications, today announced that one year after its initial launch, the C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA) is proving to change the way patient care is delivered. The success of the industry’s first mobile clinical assistant is clear this year at HIMSS, where the device will be featured by more than 50 vendors across the show floor.

“The C5 was developed by Motion and Intel to address many of the issues that are facing healthcare organizations today,” said Scott Eckert, CEO of Motion. “The most positive result is that we are enabling caregivers to provide better patient care by impacting such critical areas as improving point of care documentation, enhancing nursing satisfaction and providing immediate access to information to help clinicians prevent medication issues, like medication administration errors.”

Results from a recent study:

*  42 percent improvement in point of care (POC) documentation
* 80 percent reduction in data that needed manual transcription, reducing the potential for human error
* Identification of 15 of 1853 “near misses” at the point of medication administration
* Decreased transcription error rate from 25 percent to 7 percent due to increased POC documentation

Checkout this case study from Island Hospital ( PDF ), detailing their use of the C5

Motion Computing has begun launching YouTube videos featuring their products and customer experiences.

Below is one focusing on the C5, healthcare, and overall customer experience. Check this link for two other videos, featuring LE1700 drop tests from 24" and 37".

McKesson Corp, a healthcare services IT company, announced general availability of Motion's C5 Tablet PC as part of its Horizon Clinicals solution package:

Building upon two decades of experience in mobile point-of-care solutions, McKesson is the first healthcare IT company to announce general availability for the Motion C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant tablet PC. The announcement comes after months of testing with McKesson’s Horizon Clinicals^® applications, configuration and firmware enhancements, and special arrangements with Motion Computing^® for unique product, training and support bundles. Developed by Intel Corporation and Motion Computing in collaboration with thousands of clinicians as well as industry-leading companies like McKesson, the C5 has now proven in multiple implementations to enhance the benefits of information technology for clinicians, and ultimately for patients.

Well Samsung has been in the Ultra-Mobile PC mix since day 1 with the venerable Q1. Then a series of Q1’s followed: The Q1P, the Q1B, the Q1V, and of course the Q1 Ultra Ultra Mobile PC. Now they are rolling out the Q1 Ultra Premium. One thing is for sure, Samsung doesn’t want to let go of that Q1 branding.

That aside the Q1 Ultra Premium UMPC (that’s a mouthful, but then so is the shortcut: Q1UP-XP) will run Windows XP Tablet Edition and set you back $1,399. It runs a 1.33GHz ULV Intel Core Solu U1500 Processor and they are touting 7.5 hours of battery life. Supposedly the split keyboard, now at Version 1.5 has larger keys.

Samsung will be dropping the line on its other Q1 entries to make run for the Ultra Premium model, so it sounds like a good time to be in the market for one of those earlier models is just ahead.

Here are some details from UMPC Portal on the Q1 Ultra Premium UMPC. 

And here is a link to the press release.

We’ll post pics up as soon as we can dig some up.

Thanks to jkkmobile for some early info on this.

In today's webcast, Motion Computing and Intel announced the results of their usability study of the C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant Tablet PC. Here's the press release and a snippet of the announcement.

Intel Corporation and Motion Computing® today announced the results from several clinician usability studies completed by leading medical centers. The C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA) is now being used in more than 1,000 hospitals worldwide, and clinicians are reporting a variety of positive results, including increased productivity, improved clinician satisfaction, better adherence to medication administration protocols and decreased latency in recording patient information.

The C5 was developed based on extensive research completed by Intel and Motion, with active participation from thousands of clinicians and leading clinical systems and software providers, to enable nurses, physicians and other clinicians to more effectively do their jobs on the move and provide better care by connecting them with patient information at the bedside. In addition, the unprecedented collaboration among clinician end users, hardware developers and clinical software companies is a concept now proven by C5 implementations to maximize the measurable benefits of information technology in a medical environment.

Some of the industry-leading organizations sharing their initial study results include:

• Alegent Health in Omaha: 62 percent improvement in clinician satisfaction.
• Children’s Hospital in Omaha: 15 percent productivity and efficiency increase, enabling clinical pharmacists increase time spent bedside with the rounding care team and patients in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to 98 percent.
• Johns Hopkins School of Nursing: 85 percent of nurses rated C5 as important to helping improve nursing practice and increasing efficiency.
• Medical University of South Carolina: 25 percent improvement in patient vital sign charting accuracy, substantial reduction in charting delays and increased compliance with bar code medication administration guidelines.
• UCSF Medical Center: 60 percent clinician productivity improvement and 83 percent reduction in manual transcription of patient vitals information.

Don't forget to watch Motion Computing's and Intel's live webcast, in which they talk about the C5 Tablet PC and usability results.

When: Today, December 4th, from 10:00 - 11:30 am PST

Where: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/event.asp?id=44228

Technorati Tags: C5, Motion Computing, Tablet PC, Healthcare

Motion Computing and Intel will be holding an event in San Jose on December 4th to announce the results of usability studies of their C5 Tablet PC mobile clinical assistant. There will be a live webcast of the event ( 10 - 11:30 am PST). We'll be covering the live webcast and will post a wrap-up of the studies here on GBM, too.

Here are the details:

WHAT: Intel Corporation and Motion Computing will hold a press and industry event to reveal results from usability studies featuring the Motion Computing C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA). The MCA was created by Intel with support from Motion to enable nurses and clinicians to more effectively do their jobs on the move, and provide better care by spending more time at the patient bedside. Industry-leading hospitals will discuss the impact of MCA implementations on quality of care, productivity and clinician satisfaction.

Additionally, Intel and Motion will lead a discussion with key healthcare leaders regarding the struggles nurses and caregivers face, technology’s role in healthcare reform and Intel and Motion’s unique approach to delivering a product that meets the needs of nurses and clinicians.

TabletPCBuzz.com continues to highlight the practical uses of Tablet PCs, this time focusing on the home healthcare industry. John Hill shot this video of Denise, a home health nurse, as she went about her daily activity of caring for patients using a Motion Computing LS800 LE1700 Tablet PC.

We haven’t heard much lately about Toshiba’s R400 Tablet PC and Wireless Dock combo, and in my opinion, that is probably due to the steep price point. But Popular Science has recently named the R400 with Wireless Dock among its Best of What’s New 2007 Awards.

Via Tablet PC Talk

Here is some good news from Mi-Co for our mobile health-care readers:

Mi-Co, the mobile data capture software company, today announced that following its successful exhibition at the National Association for Home Care and Hospice (NAHC) conference in Denver, the company is offering a free "Needs Assessment for Mobile E-Forms for OASIS" to organizations that provide home health and hospice care.

To apply for the free assessment, healthcare providers may contact Mi-Co through the Mi-Co Web site or by calling (919) 485-4819 x1617. Eligible companies must currently be submitting claims to Medicare for reimbursement and have 20 or more mobile caregivers who are required to complete OASIS forms at offsite locations.

Philips just announced a new 10.4" Tablet PC aimed again at the medical professionals. Dubbed the CliniScape, it looks like a really nice, small slate style Tablet PC with a handgrip on the back. The tech specs are respectable but not the fastest out there:

Ultra-ergonomic
- 10” XGA pen-touch-screen
- smart swappable battery (3,5 hrs)
- lightweight (1,6kg) with backside handgrip to minimize  fatigue
All-in-one functionality
- Windows Vista Business and Intel Core Solo processor (1,2GHz)
- wireless 802.11 b/g/n connectivity
- barcode imager and RFID reader to support the five rights of patient safety
- digital camera (2Mpxl) to capture pictures of patient wounds
Medical appliance
- easy to wipe clean to reduce spread of infection (IP54)
- medical grade certification for maximum patient protection
- durable design for less risk of downtime (1m. drop proof)

If you got rid of some of the features that make it specifically a medically focused device, this could be a good general purpose Tablet PC. Unfortunately, as-is it will likely be expensive since getting those medical certifications isn't cheap. According to the press release, it should be available in the Spring of 2008.

via Engadget