Toughbooks?

[Chris07]

I still like the Tablet idea.

I too like the tablet idea, but....

1. Typing a narrative on a touch screen would really suck! Solution? Bluetooth portable keyboard.
2. We scan our trailing documents (Fire PCRs, Face sheets, insurance card copies) into our ePCR. Connecting a portable document scanner to a tablet is a little challenging :unsure:

 

[titmouse]

as long as the scanners are working we scan, sometimes thats not the case lol

 

[bill williams]

There's a reason that the rest of the medical community uses electronic record keeping. They're much more portable, it can help eliminate many documentation problems (completeness and neatness), and data can actually be pulled out of the records in efficient manner.

There are some states requiring ePCRs now I and I suspect that paper charts will soon be a thing of the past.

And what happens if these computer systems crash and lose all patients records and data?

 

[sir.shocksalot]

And what happens if these computer systems crash and lose all patients records and data?

Data loss is a reality for anyone using computers for storage. Radiation given off by the sun can actually corrupt data stored in RAM. Any industry using data storage will use redundant hard drives so that data can be rescued from hard drive corruption. Some RAID formats allow for 2-3 hard drives to fail before data is lost. But losing a bit of patient data is not really as big of a deal as someone's bank records.

 

[Tigger]

And what happens if these computer systems crash and lose all patients records and data?

As mentioned, data retention is an industry unto itself.

Not to mention that such an argument holds no water in that paper records are by no means infallible and are quite sensitive to environmental damage.

 

[AtlasFlyer]

As long as there are two backups to the data (on-site and off-site) you don't need to worry about data loss. The probability of loss of data on the unit, server failure on-site AND server failure off-site is low.

 

[Kevinf]

Data loss is a reality for anyone using computers for storage. Radiation given off by the sun can actually corrupt data stored in RAM. Any industry using data storage will use redundant hard drives so that data can be rescued from hard drive corruption. Some RAID formats allow for 2-3 hard drives to fail before data is lost. But losing a bit of patient data is not really as big of a deal as someone's bank records.

There isn't any radiation given off by our sun capable of penetrating a steel or even plastic chassis. Cosmic rays do have the necessary power to "flip bits", but if this is a concern ECC (Error Checking & Correcting or Error Correcting Code) memory is the solution.

And what happens if these computer systems crash and lose all patients records and data?

The next layer of protection is a journaling filesystem, then a redundant array of disks or replicated folders, then on-line backups, then off-line backups.

In short, data is valuable enough, we are more than capable of keeping it around and safe.

 

[RocketMedic]

Bill Williams, you do know paper tears, burns and fades right?

 

[Bullets]

Let's see, the agency they generates the chart keeps a copy, the medical director gets a copy, the receiving hospital gets a copy and the Department of Health get a copy. Each of these systems are separate so you would have to have all four systems fail simultaneously across the state to lose patient data

 

[bill williams]

Bill Williams, you do know paper tears, burns and fades right?

Did you know that George Washington's white horse was white?