Mobilizing a health professional's workstation--results of an evaluation study

To evaluate the idea of a multifunctional mobile pen computer to support information processing tasks of health care professionals we carried out a field study. On a tablet-sized mobile pen computer we set up a health professional workstation, MEDIAS/WIN, with most of the application systems that are presently used by health professionals at Heidelberg University Medical Center. Our experiences during the study, involving 11 physicians, nine nurses and four computer scientists showed that it's not enough to make existing applications mobile most user interfaces have to be adapted for pen input. The presented system served as a valuable basis for study purposes but was not suitable for use in clinical routine. Patient data of the current clinical case and medical knowledge in the form of reference lists were found to be most important for mobile usage. Desirable functionality also included mobile access to electronic mail, electronic ordering of meals and some documentation tasks, e.g. the documentation of diagnoses and orders for diagnostic and therapy.