Here’s some interesting news from Intel. At its Developers Forum in San Francisco, the company has revealed a prototype information management system for busy clinicians:
The mobile clinical assistant platform is the outcome of hospital workflow studies, nurse and physician interviews, and ethnographic research among nurses at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif. It focuses on the healthcare community’s needs to enhance patient safety, reduce medication-dispensing errors and ease staff workloads.
Products based on the mobile clinical assistant platform could offer a variety of features and technologies including: an exterior casing that can be wiped clean with disinfectant; radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for rapid user and patient identification; and barcode scanning to help reduce medication-dispensing errors. The platform could also include a digital camera to enhance patient charting and progress notes; Bluetooth technology to record patient vital signs; wireless connectivity to access electronic medical records systems. In addition to having a lightweight design, ergonomic features such as an integrated handle, and a spill- and drop-tolerant enclosure, the mobile platform could provide shift-long use made possible by to swapping batteries while in a docking station.
“To improve the quality of healthcare and staff workflow, the most critical task is to deliver the right information to the point of decision — which is most often at the patient’s bedside,” Burns said. [Louis Burns is vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Health Group –ed.] “This platform was designed in collaboration with the very people who must have access to up-to-the-minute patient care records and be able to document a patient’s condition in real time.”
We’ll have to wait and see. One thing is clear: it will be Intel inside.
Press release…
Intel in Healthcare page…
(hat tip: Geekzone; Engadget)