Application of handheld computers for mobile access to a cardiology information system

Patient care in a coronary care unit (CCU) can be greatly improved by direct access to a specially-tailored electronic patient record (EPR) system. Current systems are based on large, non-portable workstations or PCs; the present information systems are global applications, not specifically designed for registration and data retrieval at the bedside. As part of the on-going development of CARIS (CARdiology Information System), we have developed dedicated modules to support the clinical care process in the CCU. The user interface has been specifically designed to make the necessary typing effort as small as possible. Instead of on standard PCs, the applications run on so-called Web tablets (Siemens SIMpad^©). The SIMpad solution was preferred above keyboardless notebook computers (e.g. the Fujitsu Stylistic^©) or palm-sized organizers (Palm^© )