Which design? — When looking for a tablet PC the first choice will be whether to go with a slate or a convertible. Some physicians prefer the slimmer profile and lighter weight of the slate — especially those in a clinical environment, who spend a lot of time on the move. Others prefer the convertible because they like the convenience of the built-in keyboard. If you spend more time in your office than in the clinic, the convertible might be the way to go.  

Which processor? — As soon as you walk into a store or begin searching the Web, you'll be faced with tablet PCs using central processing units from different manufacturers, running at different speeds. Fortunately processor speeds are already impressive. Most tablet PCs provide clock speeds approaching or surpassing 1 GHz (gigahertz), which is more than adequate to handle most any application you'll be using in clinical practice.

What's the battery life? — As long as pricing doesn't become an issue, you will likely want to get as much battery life as you can. Think through your day and determine the maximum battery life you will need. It will be listed as a specification, so it is easy to check. Fortunately, battery life is being expanded significantly by a new generation of processors built specifically to run mobile devices while conserving draw on the battery. Chip manufacturers including Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Transmeta have chip-based technology that significantly enhances battery life.

How big is the hard drive? — Hard drives tend to range from 20 to 80 gigabytes, providing plenty of room for the operating system, medical practice applications, medical dictionaries, and other references. It's good to purchase toward the higher end on hard drives, simply because they usually don't cost that much more, and it is better to have too much storage space than not enough.
The good news is that whichever tablet PC you might choose, it should open the door to a wonderfully new way of practicing medicine.

Bill Crounse, MD, is global healthcare industry manager for the Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry Solutions Group at Microsoft Corp. He can be reached at editor@physicianspractice.com.

This article originally appeared in the May 2004 issue of Physicians Practice.

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Success Story

Starting our own practice from scratch five years ago was definitely a challenge. Children First Pediatrics sees an average of 100 to 120 patients per day with four physicians and four nurses in our single San Antonio location.

To streamline our work, we purchased Charting Plus, an EMR from MediNotes Corporation, to chart our patient's medical records electronically instead of using paper charts. Most of the clinicians in the office choose to use Charting Plus on a pen-based tablet PC to enter data during the office visit.

A tablet PC is lightweight and portable just like a paper chart. We can enter data easily and quickly right at the point-of-care. Just by touching a screen, our providers get immediate, clinical alerts based on the documentation entered. They can instantly view a patient's medical history and monitor any potential drug interactions.

The nurses are able to enter vaccines much faster than if they were writing. We probably save between five and 10 minutes per patient by entering vaccines electronically. In the long run, I estimate that we will save more because we can now print vaccine records directly without pulling paper charts. We are also saving approximately 10 minutes per chart when we need lab data and patient information. 

When you calculate this for every single chart-pull, it's clear that the minutes saved add up quickly.

— Juan Ferreris, MD, Children First Pediatrics, San Antonio, Texas