I’ve posted on this before, but I’m wondering if the iPhone might point toward a huge step forward over current PDA capabilities. I’m not sure that continually updated medical reference material (as discussed at MedGadget) is very helpful, but what about in-patient vital signs, point-of-care glucose levels, labs, etc. Take Diabetic Ketoacidosis for example. Like most doc’s I find treatment of DKA fairly straightforward, but it’s stressful, time consuming, and fraught with medico-legal pitfalls. This is a partly because of the large volume of data required to follow the patient’s progress. In order to see the latest results I currently have to either log into a desktop computer or find a sync portal for my PDA (it’s a bit awkward I suppose, but it sure beats the days of paper charts). I would like to have a PDA/iPhone, or whatever, that continually updates in real time every parameter I need. Now that would be something to get excited about.
