The Mobile Clinical Assistant (MCA) is a specialty tablet PC designed to be used in a clinical setting such as a hospital or physician’s office. Its goal is to replace the traditional clipboard or patient folder with an electronic device that has a similar form factor, but provides more capabilities than a paper-based recording system.
The devices features, such as bar-code and radio frequency identification scanners, help healthcare providers with the Five Rights of medical administering: the right patient, the right time, the right dose, the right route of administration, and the right drug. Confirming these five areas before administering medication or other treatments reduces errors and improves quality of care.
The term MCA might be new to some of you, but the tablet PC has been around for over fifteen years in one form or another. The earliest version - the Apple Newton MessagePad - was an innovative device, but handwriting recognition quality hurt its usefulness. Until now, another reason tablet PCs haven’t gained in popularity is those prior generations of tablet PCs suffered from both hardware problems and software issues.
Hardware issues in the early versions of tablet PCs, occurred because they were more like laptops with pivoting hinges to allow the screen to lay flat over the keyboard. This made them difficult to hold and they were prone to breakage at the hinge or the screen. Today’s MCAs, such as the Panasonic Toughbook CF-H1 and the Advantech MICA-101, have been completely redesigned to provide greater comfort while they user is holding the device. Today’s MCAs are not general purpose devices, but are specifically tailored to the harsh working conditions faced in busy healthcare facilities, which allows the device to be resistant to spills and to be disinfected without damage. MCAs are more durable and have screens with improved damage resistance.
Software has improved also, especially in the area of handwriting recognition, but also applications make more use of rich internet-style user interfaces that allow users to select items with the stylus/pen and don’t require as much free-form writing.
2010 is poised to be the year that more healthcare facilities adopt MCAs. Overall perception of tablet PCs in general has improved with small form devices such as the iPhone and Amazon Kindle gaining in popularity. Also large technology companies such as Intel are championing MCAs. Intel has published their MCA Reference Architecture and has made a software development kit available to allow companies to build application which will run on a number of different vendor’s MCAs which are based on the Intel architecture. Also, other companies such as Apple and Google are looking to enter the market. Apple is expected to launch a large format iPhone-like device in 2010 that could boast many of the usability features that has made the iPhone popular and include a larger screen to support the capture and display of medical records and medical imaging.
Also in 2010, a big push will be made around healthcare reform. One of the cornerstones of the healthcare reform is the migration to electronic health records(EHR). This means more facilities will be electronically capturing and viewing health records on devices instead of on paper. As smaller facilities move to EHR, the demand for MCAs will increase, reducing the cost and improving the quality.
This week, HealthcareGoesMobile.com is focusing on the Mobile Clinical Assistant with webinars, case studies, and videos aimed at educating the community around these devices, so I recommend you check out our other blogs and site content to be ready to help your clients understand and adopt this important device.
Don Sheppard is a Delivery Manager at Prolifics, responsible for ensuring the health and success of key projects. Don is a Master Certified I/T Architect with the Open Group and has more than 18 years of experience, including 13 years at IBM as CTO for the National Portal Services Practice. Don has designed large, complex web and portal architecture, including web 2.0 sites and rich Internet applications in numerous industries, including healthcare.
