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EMS House of DeFrance http://www.emshouse.com Tech Med Courtesy the EMS House of DeFrance http://www.defrance.org The latest technology is being used to treat patients, but now doctors are using new technology to figure out what the treatment should be. Wireless devices are bringing medicine into the digital age. On a typical day at any hospital, most doctors will see dozens of patients, read stacks of lab results and write just as many prescriptions, then hunt down a computer to retrieve information, but not Doctor Vera Fajtova. Everything she needs is in the palm of her hand. Personal digital assistants, or PDAs, have become lifesavers for doctors and helped make medicine more interactive. Providing doctors easy access to medical information is the brainchild of Patient Keeper. The company develops mobile applications that wirelessy link a doctor's PDA to the hospital's computer system. Monte Brown, Brigham & Women's Hospital: "Just knowing where your patients are, we have 120 admissions a dayand 150 transfers, so they move patients around, you need to know,and so you don't have to go anwhere to find that." Bill Cyr is a paramedic with Boston Med Flight. In his job, there's no time to check medical books, so his PDA is critical. Bill Cyr, Boston Medflight: "Obviously, in the space we have in the helicopter, there is not enoughroom for a whole a library of medical textbooks, so we're are able to pullout of our PDAs and look up what we need to do." A recent survey of health professionals says using PDAs helps improve workflow, reduces medical errors and gives doctors more time to spendwith patients, and that certainly sounds like a prescription for success. The
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