Blackberrys and other
handheld devices offer useful medical applications
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All those Star Trek episodes
that Dr Paul Arnold watched as a kid must have made
quite an impression — he's grown up to become one
of Canada's leading advocates of handheld computers
in medicine. And although he can't yet travel to his
Toronto emergency departments by uttering "Beam me up,
Scotty" ("I thought we would be at a further point by
now," he says wistfully), some of the futuristic gadgets
used by the crew of the USS Enterprise have indeed become
reality and have become integral parts of his medical
practice.
"A long time ago in a hospital
far away I was asked by a colleague why his housestaff
kept whipping out pocket 'calculators' when rounding
in the morning," wrote doctor Dr Arnold last year in
his Medical Palm Review newsletter. "As it happened
I didn't know much more than him about PDAs [personal
digital assistants] but had more spare time to explore
the subject." That was the beginning of his love affair
with the medical applications of handheld computers
and cell phones — which have grown immensely popular
over the past decade.
Dr Arnold's weapon of choice is
a Palm Zire, which he's loaded up with a range of powerful
tools: a digital pharmacopeia reference guide, a database
of clinic and hospital phone numbers, a list of difficult-to-remember
Ontario billing codes, and a collection of digital stopwatches
that he uses to remind himself to check back in on patients.
And that's only a small taste of what handheld computers
can offer in terms of medical uses nowadays.
MOBILE
MEDICINE
In Kitchener, Ontario, Research In Motion, the locally-based
multinational company that gave the world the Blackberry,
donated some of its devices to its hometown's paramedics.
Now, when Kitchener paramedics have patients they suspect
may be having heart attacks, they wire them up to an
ECG and send the results directly to a cardiologist
at the hospital. If the ECG reveals a STEMI, the cardiologist
can send the patient to have an angioplasty immediately,
skipping over any futile attempts at drug therapies
in the ER. "It's almost like having me in the field,"
interventional cardiologist Suzanne Renner told The
Globe and Mail earlier this year. "I can read the
ECG and even talk to the patient on the phone." The
project has shaved valuable minutes off the time it
takes to get a STEMI patient into surgery. "It's a proven
strategy," adds Dr Arnold.
Another important clinical application
is the ability to transfer digital photos. The technology
hasn't been perfected, but it's coming along. "We've
had residents take photos of rashes and email them to
a dermatologist during rounds, or a photo of a burn
to a Sunnybrook burn expert" says University of Toronto's
Technology Application Unit director Dr Stephen Lapinsky.
As handheld computers continue
to improve — this year's Blackberrys, Palms and
iPhones are incredible improvements over the devices
from the 90s — "wireless medicine" continues to
gain support. "I think there are potential advantages
for anyone to have all that information in your pocket,"
says Dr Lapinsky.
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