E/Tablet Technology May Provide Benefits To Patients, Researchers

Patients like those tablets too, no more old clipboard and filling out the same information over and over. A tablet can easily be placed in a kiosk in a private area of the office to serve the same purpose, as this way the data is collected and it can help with entering the same redundant information. BD

The old wooden clipboard and pen that patients typically encounter when providing information in a doctor's office may soon be replaced by wireless, handheld notebook-and-pen-style computers called E/Tablets.

Patients in some community cancer clinics have been using E/Tablets for several years, but a new study by Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers shows that E/Tablets may also be useful in busy, academic medical settings for both for collecting patient history data and conducting clinical research.
"When you go to the doctor's office you're asked to fill out a medical history form each and every time, and some of that information -- like gender and what your grandma died of -- never changes," said Amy Abernethy, M.D., an oncologist and lead investigator on the study. "E/Tablets allow patient information to be stored permanently and confidentially. We also found that patients are satisfied with the tablets, that they furnish comparable data to those collected on paper, and that they may even be more effective in collecting data on sensitive subjects, like sexual satisfaction."
Nearly three-quarters of the patients reported that using the tablets made it easier for them to remember their symptoms.