Healthcare and Mobile Computing

Human Lives In Your Hands

After years of training and working 24-hour work days, doctors and nurses still have only seconds to make a critical decision. Instant access to patient data is vital to patient diagnosis and treatment, and pen tablet PCs answer the call with portability and wireless capabilities. Caregivers can tap-and-view clinical history, treatments, medication, lab results and insurance information.

Pen tablet PCs also provide quick relief from chronic headache of administration. In fact, many hospitals have gone digital in a big way, creating electronic forms that reduce paperwork and also provide one-step data entry. No more wading through a pile of scribbled notes and forms at the end of the day!

Mobile Computers and Barcode Scanning Reduce Medication Errors and Save Lives

Twenty-three percent of Americans — or nearly one in four — say they or a family member have received the wrong medication at some point from a healthcare professional, according to the latest AmerisourceBergen Index released today.

The quarterly telephone survey was conducted from January 23-26, 2003 by Opinion Research Corporation on behalf of AmerisourceBergen, the largest pharmaceutical services company in the United States dedicated solely to the pharmaceutical supply channel. The margin of error is plus or minus three percent.

The survey of 1033 adults nationwide explored a variety of issues related to patient safety, including the best ways to prevent medication errors, safety hazards in hospitals, and the priority hospitals place on patient safety.

Learn more about this survey.

What's in a Medication Name? For Patients, a Tragedy with Medication Errors

Similar-looking drug brand names confuse doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, causing patients to get the wrong medication. Add a doctor's illegible handwriting, and the patient gets the wrong medication. Despite the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration vets drug brand names, they are a minefield for medical errors.

Potential for medication mistakes was proven by U.S. Pharmacopeia, a non-government organization dedicated to health care safety. USP collected examples of confounded drug names through its Medical Error Reporting Program, which allows health care professionals to anonymously report mistakes.

Deadly Drug Mix-Ups

These real-world mistakes caused patient harm and were reported to USP between May 2000 and April 2002.

Common Medication Mix-Ups

These three drugs were most often involved in reported mix-ups to USP. Since these are anonymously reported errors and not part of a large scientific study, it is not possible to determine how often particular drugs are confused.

Obviously, confusing drug names pass the FDA approval process. For instance, Aventis' Lantus, a form of insulin that lasts all day. Amid the bustle of a hospital, it can look a lot like lente, a generic name for an older type of insulin.

A patient confusing lente with Lantus could end up with his or her blood sugar seriously out of whack. Doctors insist that errors like these can be corrected if caught early enough.

The simplest way of fixing the problem would be banning medication brand names. "That is never ever going to happen," says Raymond Muller, associate director of the pharmacy at New York City's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "Think about the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to get consumers to know the brand names of drugs. We're never going to get rid of them. What we can do is design systems to prevent medication errors."

At Memorial Sloan-Kettering, medication errors are prevented by forcing doctors to prescribe drugs via computer. Everything is digitally double-checked. Such computerized error-correction systems are starting to make it out of cancer centers into more mainstream hospitals. For instance, the Department of Veterans Affairs has started using barcodes on all of its medications to prevent errors.

"It's close to bulletproof," says Clifford Dacso, Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

But patients should try to keep track of their own medications as well. In 1948, The Physician's Desk Reference, which serves as a bible to doctors and pharmacists, was only as thick as a thumb. Now it is as thick as a weightlifter's thigh. With so many medications on the market, Dacso warns, doctors can make mistakes.

Surplus Mobility provides virtually any type of hardware with a full complement of connectivity options. New, refurbished, and previously leased equipment is available including: Pen-based computers Tablet PCs Barcode scanners Vehicle-mounted computers Portable terminals ...and more! Talk to us about trade-ins or computing hardware just coming off lease. We can help you liquidate those leased devices. If you have any stock to sell, we are always looking to purchase quantities of Stylistics, Points, Tablet PC's, other Pen Tablets, or even Notebook computers. We do all testing, refurbishing, cleaning, sealing, and packaging on all our items before we ship. Our mission is to provide innovative mobile solutions to allow businesses and individuals to effortlessly access, create, analyze, and share information anytime, anywhere. Call or email our sales department and let us know what you are looking for, including quantity, time frame, and condition. We are wired to a huge network of buyers and sellers, so if we don't have it in stock now, we'll find it and help you save money.