Is It Time to Cut the Cord with Wireless and Tablet PCs in the hospital and office?

Have you ever sat in an office with a physician typing in to a notebook? Well it just loses something in the translation when a tablet pc is much more like the old paper chart if you will. This is a good post about how many facilities are seeing the value of a Tablet PC. Do I use one, of course and have a full section devoted to the one I use here.

One thing I am really heavily relying on a lot is the speech recognition of late, since the Sahara Tablet has dual array microphones, so no headset required here! Yes, I still use inking as well, and try to use all different ways of interacting with a Tablet PC these days, and anyone who sits in meetings can certainly benefit if they only use it for notes. Check out the section on all the posts on tablet pcs here. The one I use can be seen on CSI-NY quite often.

Myself, I am very comfortable with a slate tablet pc as I really got tired of “flipping a lid” on the convertibles, plus it’s lighter and performs very well. The Sahara also has touch screen capabilities too so I don’t always need the stylus out, depending on what I want to do.

I don’t know sometimes I still see folks knocking themselves out with battling carrying a notebook around when there are easier and better ways to get a handle on some of this. A tablet is a great way to work a convention too. Been there and done that with Microsoft One Note, so much better than my poor human memory. You can always get a small folding usb or blue tooth keyboard if you need one and the Sahara goes in a big purse easily too so no having to carry that big ugly notebook bag that everyone seems to have. Those are ugly anyway.

I have even given presentations for seniors who were curios about the tablets and wanted to learn how to use speech recognition too. Here’s a few past posts and more information is located under the related reading section. BD

Some physician group practices that are reinventing their workflows as they adopt electronic health records are concluding that wireless networks fit in well with their new approaches. At Springfield (Ill.) Clinic, for example, doctors concluded that tablet computers were the most convenient option. "Physicians now don't see a patient unless they have their tablet; it's just like their stethoscope," says James Hewitt, CIO at the 195-physician practice.

Because physicians implementing EHRs will want easy access to clinical data from any location, wireless networks will be commonplace at clinics within five years, predicts Rosemarie Nelson, principal at MGMA Healthcare Consulting Group, Syracuse, N.Y. "A very large percentage of doctors' offices know that this is going to be in their future," adds Margret Amatayakul, president of MargretA Consulting in Schaumburg. Ill. "It's now more a matter of when they can afford it and how easy it will be for them to make the change."