Patient-borne memory device facilitates "point of care" data access

Although electronic medical records and a central database have made accurate and consistent patient medical information more readily available than with the traditional patient chart, there are many locations in healthcare facilities where terminals for accessing patient data are not available. As patient care becomes decentralized and more patients require anesthesia outside of the operating suites, routing a network-based system to all these locations can be expensive and time consuming. We designed a system whereby essential patient data of interest to anesthesiologists is stored on an electronic memory device the size of a watch battery attached to the patient's wristband. Accessing and editing the data is done via a hand-held computer. This system provides secure patient data storage and management at the "point of care." At the conclusion of the patient's anesthesia-related care, the data is downloaded to a relational database for use in outcome analysis, billing, and quality assurance. After collecting preoperative evaluations, intraoperative data, and postoperative data on 560 patients anesthetized for surgery or other procedures, we find this system to be a reliable, low-cost, medical information management system, with possible application to other medical specialties.