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