HIPAA and the electronic medical record

[kidfixer]

We are looking at the possibility of using clies for patient charting, and I would like to have everyones' opinion on a few quick topics:

1) Do you use your PDA to carry patient information?

2) Does uyour office or hospital have wireless intranet support for your PDA?

3) Have you prepared for the possibility of unauthorized access to your PDA? If so, how?

4) Does anyone know of any ongoing extensive use of PDAs in electronic medical record management? What platform are they using, and what software do they use?

Thanks.

[Medcat99]

I can offer one quick reply by saying that I don't especially care about HIPAA and their STUPID regulations. These peoplel have no idea what it's like to WORK in the medical field.

But, I digress,

1. I carry patient info in my PDA often

2. My hospital is too cheap or too "in the red" to afford wireless access. I'm not sure HIPAA is going to like sending vital patient info "through the air". It's too high tech for them.

3. I do not lock out my PDA, but I guess I should. I will probably change that by adding a good password program to it in the near future.

4. I have heard of systems like Sunrise Clinical Manager being accessible to PDA downloads, but I think they are using PPC's only. I know it wouldn't take much effort to sync a PDA to the system if the programming is in place. The difficult part is that without wireless nets, you need to have docking stations, and not everyone has the same type of PDA.

[XCalibur]

All of the above. :D

[hellen]

agree to all of the above
But i would like to have on my clie because it very useful when you go on rounds