Dr. Jose Sumaquial, FAACP, is a Family Practitioner at Beale Air Force Base. This past June he completed a year as Chief Resident at St. Mary's Hospital in New Jersey. He is unusually dependent on his Pocket PC and in this article we follow him through a typical day to highlight the various uses that can help save time and work.
"My iPAQ alarm goes off faithfully at 5:30 a.m. Luckily it's loud enough to wake me. My Palm V alarm wouldn't even stir me. Soon afterwards, I'm in the car and off to work. Once in the hospital, I go through my daily routine of checking on my patients and their progress overnight. This includes checking their morning blood work values and vital signs over the previous night. I document these in my customized HanDBase database which allows me to track my patients' information. The best part about this software is its cross-platform compatibility with Palm OS machines so I can beam information to my Palm-toting colleagues. Once done here, I use the same HanDBase database to construct my patient progress notes. To speed data entry into my Pocket PC, I pull out my Stowaway Keyboard for the iPAQ. This nifty keyboard is slightly larger than my iPAQ but folds out to a laptop computer-size keyboard. For the final touch, I print my completed patient progress note on the local laser printer via infrared using PrintPocketCE software."
Dr. Jose Sumaquial with his invaluable assistant.
Dr. Sumaquial has created a customized database to keep track of specific information on his patients. This can be a time-consuming process at first, but the database is then tailored to one's specific needs. Other health care professionals use one of the many commercial patient tracking software programs available. These offer a variety of data input options and range in price from free to quite expensive. A fairly comprehensive listing can be found at
www.medicalpocketpc.com/software/patient.html.
"Ward rounds with medical students, residents, and the attending physician begin soon after I have completed my progress notes. During the discussion of our patients, many questions regarding drug-drug interactions, drug dosing and adverse reactions arise. Luckily, I have Lexidrugs installed on my Pocket PC. This software allows me to access drug information quicker than it takes to look up the same facts in commonly carried medical reference books (and it's much lighter than carrying around a phonebook- sized reference containing comparable data). To end the patient rounds, my attending physician recaps the list of tasks for the day. I quickly jot them down in my iPAQ's task list and it's off to lecture and lunch!"
While LexiDrugs is no longer available, Skyscape has created many other titles for Pocket PCs. Although there isn't yet an equivalent of the ubiquitous and free ePocrates (made for the Palm OS), a variety of software solutions are available for Pocket PCs. The bigger and sharper screens on the Pocket PCs make it is easier to view drug information while on the wards. Also, there are specialty drug references available for many fields, and other programs which allow physicians to write prescriptions directly from their handheld units.
"At the noon lecture," says Dr. Sumaquial, "I speak with the guest professor, who has agreed to collaborate with me on a research project. I beam my contact information to her Palm device via Peacemaker and she beams her information to me."
Beaming contact information to and from Palm OS machines is even easier with the Pocket PC 2002 operating software. This ability is now integrated in the operating system.
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