We strongly recommend the SL8 Windows Slate for point of care applications, including electronic forms, PAS and clinical system access and update.
The devices are also highly suited for accessing information, whether in documents, email or directly from intranets etc. We see them having a place in executive and senior manager meetings as a replacement for folios of documents.
We have also found them to be far less intrusive in people-people interactions, doubling as an electronic notebook and application terminal, but without presenting a barrier between the user and members of staff or public. In this scenario we find Microsoft OneNote to be especially valuable as it allows pen or keyboard input and also allows realtime capture of audio linked to written notes.
Scenarios
1. Point of care
A new patient is admitted to the ward and the nursing staff need to review the patient notes and complete a VTE assessment.
The patient’s named nurse walks past the nursing station on the way to the patient bedside, grabbing the ward’s SL8 from its cradle where it has been kept fully charged and where IT have recently applied some updates via the high speed Ethernet cable. Lifting it out of the cradle, it switches to the hospital Wi-Fi and prompts the nurse to log in while she walks to the bed.
Now at the bedside the nurse opens up the hospital’s clinical portal and accesses the rich client interface which has been installed on the SL8 to review the patient details. Because it is light and thin, she is able to talk to the patient without the slate getting in the way and can also show the patient some of the results she sees have come back from recent tests.
While she is with the patient she quickly accesses their SharePoint intranet using the browser, which was already open at the intranet home page, and navigates to the forms library with just a couple of touches on the capacitive screen. A further touch opens a blank VTE form which is soon populated with the patient details directly from PAS. The nurse shows the patient the form as she is filling it in, rotating it to portrait mode to see the whole form. The assessment complete and already stored in the patient’s record, she quickly checks the eDischarge form and ensures the doctor has their part of the form well in hand.
Walking back to the nursing station, she also quickly opens the Estimated Date of Discharge application and sees the patient is expected to be released in 4 days but that social services have yet to complete a Section 5. She makes a note to chase that up to ensure the patient can go home on time and that the ward can get a valuable bed released for another patient.
2. Board and committee meetings
The Executive Board meeting is due next week and several PAs have been working diligently to pull together the papers the executive and non-executive directors need to review prior to the meeting.
As each document is completed the PAs have saved it into the Board Meeting workspace on their SharePoint intranet. They have also set up alerts for the board members, so simply adding or updating the document library in the meeting space automatically generates a daily email alert to every member advising them of any new content they need to read. One document has been updated with the latest figures; because the library has version control enabled the PA has saved this update as a new major version and has noted which page the update is on in the version history so that the execs don’t have to reread the entire document.
Equipped with their handy SL8 slates, the executive team have rapid access to all the documents in the meeting site and can easily browse to them and comfortably read the documents on the clear 11.6 inch screen via the hospital Wi-Fi network. Spotting some things to query, one director touches the OneNote icon and quickly adds some hand written comments she wants to bring up at the meeting, now that the document and OneNote page remain linked. One the train home that evening she has 40 minutes, so takes her SL8 out of her light briefcase and hits the power button; in seconds the device has resumed from standby. With no internet access, she touches the SharePoint Workspace icon and opens the offline copy of the Board Meetings site. All the documents, agenda items etc. have synchronised and she is able to review another paper before disembarking. The changes she makes are updated to the main SharePoint site as soon as she gets a connection.
On the day of the meeting the chief exec’s PA opens the Meeting site on the board room projector from her laptop while the board members each have the site open on their SL8s along with the notes they have made safely stored in OneNote. They can see the agenda on screen and check their own notes and reports as they move through the meeting. They can see the PA updating tasks and progress notes on the fly and know that they will have access to these in the workspace and through Outlook after the meeting.
