A wireless wide area network PDA application for on-call ambulatory care physicians

Abstract

Current implementations of patient information review on Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are gaining traction in the in-patient hospital setting. There are tremendous patient safety and satisfaction, workflow improvement and physician satisfaction improvements possible if similar technology is optimized and used in the ambulatory care setting. We have performed a study of Partners HealthCare System (PHS) physicians to determine user requirements, implemented a formal method (not previously used within the PHS Information Systems division) to create a Software Requirements Specification (SRS), and developed a prototype user interface for a future LMR2go application (a mobile adjunct for the ambulatory care Longitudinal Medical Record system in use at PHS). The results of the study provided a core set of functions for the LMR2go application which physicians would like to use while on-call and substantiated the potential adoption of such an application. After an analysis of current software and hardware technologies, review of the study results and components of the actual SRS, a sample run through of a typical on-call physician workflow on the LMR2go User Interface is provided.