A Day in the Life of a Doctor

Dr Gold, M.D., remembers the "old" days when he used to spend nearly half an hour waiting to use a community desktop computer at his local medical center. The family practitioner often had to wait in line several times each day to get information about his patients before he saw them. Unfortunately many of the other doctors in the practice were suffering from the same issues. Being a part of a small practice its all about how many patients you can see in a day and Dr Gold truly believes he has the solution with his cPC and this is his typical day at the practice.

Its 7:00 am and Dr Gold jumps in the car grabs his cPC and plugs in his 3G data card into the Compact Flash slot so he can receive e-mails while he is driving, Dr Gold then plugs in his cPC into the charger. He forgot to charge it overnight, but his 1-hour commute to his local medical center will be more than enough time to re-charge the Lithium Polymer batteries to full capacity that lasts 8 hours in Mobile-Mode and 2-3 hours in Computer-Mode. While he is driving, Dr Gold has his cPC read out loud a dozen other e-mails from the other doctors in his practice using the text-to-speech software he bought recently. As Dr Gold is driving he thinks to himself, the great thing about the cPC being a Windows Mobile and Tablet XP UMPC is that virtually any software will run on it because it’s not a compatible device, it is a Windows Logo Certified Windows Mobile and Tablet XP computer. As he got closer to the office he noticed a large traffic jam around a mile and a half long. During his wait he received a call from his assistant telling him Mr Kron a patient of his called asking for a refill of his current prescription. Not a problem at all for Dr Gold since he had his cPC with him and his 3G card with him he was able to login to his clinical application and send a prescription to Mr Kron’s local pharmacy. As Dr Gold completes the prescription he chuckles to himself asking, “How did I ever get anything done in the office before?”

As Dr. Gold arrives at the local medical center he immediately pops in his CF Wifi card into the cPC and is instantly connected to his internal network. Dr Gold then turns on the cPC and immediately has his entire patient schedule already downloaded onto his cPC. Another great feature was the instant on capabilities of the cPC using Windows Mobile 5.0, Dr Gold doesn’t have to wait for the traditional boot-up time of Windows XP. As he glances over his schedule he immediately boots up Windows XP Tablet side of the cPC for his daily routine visiting patients. His first patient was a 52 year old man Paul recovering from a sinus operation that Dr Gold performed three weeks ago. Prior to Dr Gold arriving in the room the nurse practitioner hands a cPC to the patient requesting for him to fill out some forms concerning his symptoms. Once Paul received the cPC he was amazed by the small form factor which was 6 inches x 3.5 inches and weighing only 1.1 pounds! Since the cPC also runs the Windows XP Tablet Paul was very familiar with the interface along with the touch screen making it extremely easy for him to use his finger to answer the “yes” and “no” questions.

Another nice feature Dr Gold provided his patients was the capability to have a copy of the forms they fill out emailed to them as a PDF file. Since the cPC had been connected to the wireless network Paul will immediately receive an email of all the paperwork he filled out when he gets home. As Dr Gold arrives in the room hd pulls his cPC out of his lab coat and pulls up Paul’s entire medical history on the cPC. During Paul’s exam Dr Gold was able to pull up the all of the x-ray’s of his sinuses along with a video synopsis of the actual procedure he performed. One of the complaints Paul had was that he has had a considerable amount of pain inside the nose. Dr. Gold immediately flips over to the Windows Mobile 5.0 side of the cPC and prescribes Paul a different pain medicine and sends it to his local pharmacy. Paul was excited to find out that when he gets home he will have all of his paperwork along with the side effects of the medicine prescribed waiting for him as an email. Not only that, no more waiting in line for his prescription since Dr. Gold already placed his order 30 minutes ago. Once Dr. Gold left Paul’s room he flips back over to the Windows XP Tablet side of the cPC and starts his dictation. Since the cPC has a built in stereo microphone Dr. Gold can dictate anywhere he is, as along as he has a high speed internet connection. Previously, Dr. Gold would dictate to a portable hand recorder and then have to upload the file to his clinical application for transcribing.

Another big bottleneck for Dr Gold was the actual hard copy files which took a tremendous amount of room. Last year Dr Gold had all the medical files converted to digital format so he was able to destroy all hard copy patient folders. This was a big plus for Dr Gold since he now has his entire patient library right inside his lab coat! No more looking for manila folders anymore which was another distraction to his practice. As Dr. Gold’s day completed he walked back into his office and looked around. Normally Dr Gold’s day ends around 7pm but even after then he would always have 2.5 hours of dictation and paperwork to fill out. No more, thanks to the cPC. Since Dr. Gold armed all of his staff with cPC’s he has eliminated a tremendous amount of paper in his office, increased customer satisfaction and added another screening room since the records room no longer exists. As, Dr. Gold walked out of his office and turned the lights off he was immediately greeted with a email from his wife on his cPC from his wife saying, “Honey, can you pickup a gallon of Milk for the family?” as Dr. Gold chuckles to himself.