5 years ago when I started in EMS, I had a palm iii. It was really nice, I was able to find a program that had all of the acls and pals things in it. Had medication lists with dosages and such. But alas, I was on a call one night on a helicopter, and it fell out of my pocket into the mediteranean sea. LOL.
The company I work for now actually uses panasonic toughbooks as fm_emt was asking about. I really like it, we have 12 of them in service, one for each of our ambulances. Its really great, we have epcrs we use, which at first take some time to get used to, but now I can run a complete pcr in about 4 mins (of course, Im the IT Supervisor lol). Its really nice because you have multiple ways of entering in the information, via the keyboard (im actually typing on one of them now), you can use the tablet mode and write with a stylus as you would a pen, or you can even attach a microphone and the computer will recognize your voice and enter in the text for you. As for getting signatures, its not a big deal for me, its almost exactly like when ups delivers a package, and when I drop a pt off a lot of times I joke around saying things like package delivered on time!
The other benifit of having the toughbooks is that it runs windows, so we have a calculator on board. It also runs adobe, so I scanned all of our sops, protocols, and other information into pdf format, then I have all of them on the desktop, giving our medics easy access to all that information. Id like to say I know everything lol, but the other day I was responding to a CVA, and was able to overlook the protocols en route just to refresh my skills lol. Another thing I like about the toughbooks is that you can carry them into the field. when responding to a call, I carry the toughbook on a shoulder strap with an attachment that straps it to your arm, much like the predator lol. But I will put it in tablet mode, and when Im working, I can flip it out, take notes on it, then get it out of the way. Its like writing on my glove, but I wont loose the notes if I tear the glove or throw it away.
Back to the epcr deal, its nice on the admin level, because we can run reports on literally everything. How many times did this employee miss an IV access attempt? What was the success rate over all for the company in the past year? How about how many times we charged for disposable linen in the past 30 days? All that information is available to us.
ok Well I am sure ive sold this stuff to you by now lol. Ill get some pictures up hopefully today on our website, and then I will post some here!
Oh and as for the HP Ipaq, I actually own an older one, but never tried to use it in the field because it was a little bulky.. too big to put in a pocket, but too small to strap to you lol.
