Doctors across the country are abandoning their notepads, diaries and textbooks by instead putting some processing power in their pockets. Mohammed Al-Ubaydli offers some advice on choosing a handheld computer and the benefits it can offer.

A handheld computer is a computer small enough to hold in your hand or fit in your pocket. For clinicians, it is arguably the best-designed computing device - particularly with newer models, known as smartphones, because they also work as mobile phones.

There are many things you can do with a handheld computer. For example, the free software from Epocrates (www.epocrates.com) includes a formulary that is updated daily with dosages, indications and side-effects. The software also allows you to check for interactions between medications that your patient is prescribed whilst with that patient and their drug chart at the bedside.

Use in hospitals

Increasingly in the UK hospitals are investing in these devices to help clinical workflow. For example, MercuryMD’s software (www.micromedex.com) allows doctors to access patients’ full medical records during ward rounds and initiate investigations. MedHand (www.medhand.com) is selling textbooks including the BNF and the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine.

Connectivity to the Internet is great for continuing medical education allowing you to access evidence-based medicine resources like UpToDate (www.uptodate.com) and search PubMed (www.nlm.nih.gov/mobile) during ward rounds.

What to buy?

So what should you buy? The decision is whether to get a dedicated handheld computer, or a more advanced smartphone. Although the former is cheaper, the convenience of the latter means you should make the investment, especially as you’ll need a mobile phone anyway.
Pick a smartphone with a keyboard - one that is built-in rather than attached or unfolding.

Also, make sure the keyboard has a key for all the alphabet rather than just the number pad with letters superimposed. This is important because you want to be able to type a lot - lecture notes, patient history, and jobs lists all benefit from easy typing. The trick to typing is to hold the smartphone with both hands and use your thumbs to do press the keys.

Which operating system?

Next decision to make is the operating system for your smartphone. This is the software on which other programmes can run. Microsoft Windows is the operating system of most PCs and has by far the most medical software available to run on it. The market is not so skewed for smartphones but the principle is the same and the Microsoft Windows Mobile and Palm Operating System have the most clinical software available.

More recently, clinical software has become available for Blackberry devices, which are the gold standard for e-mail whilst on the move.

Get organised

Do not underestimate the power of the organiser software that is included. The address book allows you to track all the phone numbers for different wards and GP offices; the task list allows tracking of the jobs you have to do for patients every day along with their priority and time of completion; the diary stores teaching session timetables, including alarms before a session starts and easy setup of repeating sessions; finally, you can also store notes from each of these sessions.

Beam to colleagues

Many smartphones also allow you to share the information you enter with your team by ‘beaming’. To do this you  simply line-up two handheld computers and select ‘beam’ from the menu. Information will be copied from your device to your colleagues.

During my house jobs we regularly beamed the hospital phone directory to new doctors; jobs lists during the handover to those starting their shift; lecture schedules as we learnt of new teaching sessions; and lecture notes to colleagues who were not able to attend.

Software

You should budget around 100 pounds for extra software on top of what you spend on the device itself. Websites like Handango (www.handango.com) list software in categories including a medical one, and helpfully arrange downloads by popularity.

But no matter how good the software seems to be you should not buy it immediately. Instead, use the trial version and test it out during your daily work to see whether it saves you time and is worth the money.

Whichever device and software you choose you will find, like many doctors already have, that having a smartphone is convenient for you and improves the care you deliver to your patients - that’s more than a simple phone can do!

Mohammed Al-Ubaydli is author of ‘The Doctor’s PDA and Smartphone Handbook: A guide to handheld healthcare’ published by RSM Press. You can find out more at www.handheldsfordoctors.com.

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