In my last blog I compared the Motion Computing C5 mobile clinical assistant and the new Panasonic Toughbook H1 mobile clinical assistant. As we talked before, it is gratifying that these companies are providing products so focused on the particular needs of healthcare users. In today’s blog, I want to give more guidance on the two products and what to look for in each.
Essential Guidance
Motion Computing faced two major challenges when it introduced the C5. The first was to educate the market to the unique attributes and advantages of the MCA architecture as compared to other, general-purpose tablet computers or wireless laptops on rolling carts, which remain the dominant device for point-of-care (POC) computing. And Motion has done a commendable job. A series of well-designed, well-executed and well-documented workflow studies conducted by more than a half dozen early adopters have demonstrated the cost reduction and quality improvement advantages of the C5 in actual clinical practice. Our analysis of these impact studies will be profiled in an upcoming report, “The Cost and Quality Impact of IT at the Point of Care: After All, Isn’t That the Whole Point?", to be published later this year. The second major challenge for Motion was to convince the leading clinical system software vendors of the inherent advantages and the value proposition of the MCA. Given the unique nature of application acquisition and implementation in the provider market, the cooperation of these vendors, and the modifications they needed to make to their standard, desktop-oriented user interfaces was an essential prerequisite for customers to deploy MCAs. However, since the software architectures of both the C5 and the H1 are virtually identical, much of the "heavy lifting" may have already been accomplished. Leading clinical system vendors, such as Cerner, Eclipsys, GE Healthcare, MEDITECH, McKesson and Siemens, have all embraced the Motion C5 and adopted their software to integrate it into their clinical workflows. The key question which potential purchasers must answer is whether their EMR vendor of choice has developed device drivers that conform to the standards incorporated in the Intel software development kit (SDK) that is part of the MCA's reference design. If not, additional development may be required by these EMR vendors to ensure H1 compatibility with their applications. In addition, potential purchasers will need to benchmark the Panasonic Toughbook H1 and Motion C5 in real-life operations. While the Intel® AtomTM processor's power consumption may enhance battery life, an important consideration in most MCA use cases is performance. Publicly available benchmark data sources rate the performance of the Motion C5 with the Intel Core2 standard processor as superior to the Intel Atom processor. While it is unlikely that the collective sales of the H1, C5 and any others that may come to market in the future will displace wireless laptops as the reigning leader in point-of-care device sales anytime soon, the early success of the Motion C5 is driving both a heightened market awareness, and increased sales. In our most recent "Leading Indicators Survey" of hospital CIOs (September 2008), the collective use of general-purpose tablets, combined with MCA devices, is now second only to wireless laptops as the preferred POC device form factor. We expect this advantage to narrow in upcoming surveys. With the caveats noted above, Panasonic may be well-positioned to share in the harvesting of Motion's efforts to create this important niche in the POC device marketplace. While there are clear advantages to being "first to market", in some instances it is more advantageous to be second. The presence of two or more competitors legitimizes a market, drives increased adoption, gives users a choice and, in the long run, is likely to drive down prices. In our view, this is one such case. In addition, we are just beginning to see signs of increased use of IT for clinical documentation by home care providers, another key market for MCA devices. A rising tide, as they say, floats all boats. Readers are encouraged to post their comments here or email me at mholland@healthindustry-insights.com
