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Children’s Hospital Boston Turns to Skyscape Mobile Medical References for Immediate Information Access
Clinicians making their rounds at Children’s Hospital Boston are replacing charts, index cards, and heavy books with handheld wireless computers that carry important patient information and mobile medical references from Skyscape.
Marlborough, MASS (PRWEB) December 1, 2005 -- Clinicians making their rounds at Children’s Hospital Boston are replacing charts, index cards, and heavy books with 6 1/2-ounce, handheld wireless computers that carry important patient information and mobile medical references from Skyscape, Inc., the leading provider of interactive mobile references for over 475,000 medical professionals.
While the stethoscope still remains an essential tool, the handheld computers (PDA) are ideal assistants for clinicians, who benefit from having access to real-time information and up-to-date medical references while making their rounds at the hospital, said Sandeep Shah, president and CEO of Skyscape.
The hospital-funded program, called “Clinician’s PDA Project,” was initiated in October 2004 with 150 clinicians each given wireless pocket PC devices. The key project objective was to give clinicians access to information when they want it, where they want it.
“When clinicians are at a patient’s bedside, they are benefiting from having immediate access to reference materials and quick reference guide books as well as laboratory results and any clinical data we have in-house,” says Alex Khayat, the hospital’s manager for architecture, standards and emerging technologies. “Now instead of waiting minutes to obtain the relevant patient information and decide on a course of action, clinicians can access this information, as well as critical decision support references, directly at their fingertips, enabling faster, more informed decision making with fewer errors.”
After clinicians extensively reviewed references from various sources, Children’s Hospital decided on a core set of references that included three pediatric titles from Skyscape, the leading provider of trusted medical references for mobile and desktop devices. In addition, the Clinician’s PDA Project included software from many other vendors to round out the offering with Children’s Hospital specific formulary information and other clinical tools. The hospital worked very closely with the software vendors to bring their standards up to an enterprise-wide level to be able to automate, deploy, and manage very quickly and without user intervention.
Khayat says, “Skyscape has been one of the leaders in getting their software programs to match our requirements in a timely manner.”
Skyscape offers over 300 titles that cover 35 medical specialties. The Skyscape references include:
- The Harriet Lane Handbook, which provides unsurpassed diagnostic and management guidance, recommended tests, and complete therapeutic information
- Red Book, a one-stop guide to preventing, controlling, and managing infectious diseases in children
- Archimedes, with formulas ranging from Aa Gradient to Weights, the proprietary calculator provides 70 preprogrammed formulas that include specialties such as Cardiology, Pharmacology, Hematology, FEN, Pediatrics, Pulmonary, and Renal.
The PDA program takes Children’s Hospital to the technology forefront, Khayat says, giving clinicians the capability of seeing more patients, ensuring accurate and much quicker results, and improving patient care. Few medical centers in the United States have done anything similar on this scale. The implementation includes unique capabilities, such as the automated device rebuilt process that can load all the necessary software the hospital provides to the clinicians within a few minutes, as well as remote management to provide up-to-date reference software and patches.
Based on positive feedback from the pilot program, the initiative was expanded in June of this year to 1,400 clinicians.
In managing such a large rollout, some of the key challenges included implementing an enterprise deployment, keeping the references updated, and providing for adequate training. Skyscape’s enterprise solutions enabled easy deployment across the entire user base, as well as keeping the references continuously updated. In addition, Skyscape’s intuitive user interface and custom training helped get the doctors up and running quickly.
Of all of the project vendors, Khayat says Skyscape came through with a lot of material. “Skyscape developed its implementation and training programs with a very, very quick turnaround,” he says. “I was very pleased.”
The PDAs also are giving on-the-go doctors access to the hospital’s database of patient information, to the Internet, and to e-mail exchanges. They also manage the doctors’ calendars, contact information and to-do lists, and feature a voice recorder and note taker. Doctors have the capability of recording verbal notes, then e-mailing the notes to a hospital transcriber.
Results of the hospital’s project have yet to be formally measured, but the pilot project was a success, if measured by clinicians’ PDA use.
The value of the program was judged by clinicians’ use, he says. “We found that the clinicians were using it in real time while sitting with their patients. The results told the story.”
About Skyscape
Skyscape® (www.skyscape.com) is the leading provider of interactive, intelligent mobile medical references that improve the quality and efficiency of patient care and help reduce medical errors. Skyscape has a registered user base of over 475,000 medical practitioners. Its more than 300 trusted references cover 30+ medical specialties. All are integrated via Skyscape's easy-to-use smARTlink™ technology and are available on Palm OS®, Windows® Mobile and Windows® powered desktop and Tablet PCs.
Notes to Editors: Skyscape and smARTlink are registered trademarks. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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