Technology xoom and EMRs

[jrae]

so it's been a long time since I've stalked the forums but in searching for a specific answer, I'm really surprised not to see a review here on tablets and EMRs. As I start my 2nd year of combined IM-Peds and have educational money to spend, I would LOVE to get a tablet to use on rounds. I HATE THE IPAD AND ALL APPLE PRODUCTS mostly because they refuse to use any external slots for expanding memory, you can't run office to edit ppt presentations, and if you jailbreak their OS, it voids your warranty. That being said, it works really well with Cerner, which is what our health system uses. Most residents in my program do use the iPad, so I know that it works.

I am very interested in the Motorola xoom and have been very impressed with my hubbie's Atrix droid phonewhich is essentially the same in terms of touch screen, hardware, etc.... Does anyone have experience using this device or other Droid based tablet with a Citrix based EMR (Cerner, Epic....)? Again, I know that the iPad works, but I really, really hate Apple. I don't want to waste my education fund if the xoom or similar device doesn't work.

Thanks!!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[smq123]

Moving to the Technology forum.

 

[senseiturtle]

I bought a Xoom for residency. A few thoughts.

1) The product itself is great. It's truly much more "integrated" with the digital "you" than apple could ever be. Just like any gingerbread-based phone, you turn it on, sign in, and everything is already there and linked-in. When you compare it to the iPad2, it's much more slick.

2) It has as many browser crashes and hangups as the iPad, and many websites push you towards mobile versions, which handicaps the device. Battery life isn't as long as the iPad, but I still only have to charge it about 1x per week with heavy usage. My android phone requires daily charging.

3) Applications made for the phone don't necessarily expand to utilize the full screen. Dynamed is one example. Haven't tried UpToDate. Epocrates works fine.

4) VPN's and other security protocols might prevent you from accessing much of the hospital's resources. These measures are more stringent than ever due to recent patient information leaks from hospitals all over the nation. There's no guarantee that you'll be able to access the EMR from the device, and on top of that, many EMR's are web-based applications that might not even run. I haven't gotten to tinkering with my own device yet (EMR is horizon and centricity).

5) Hospitals don't want to spend money on new trends... and they're about as resourceful, adaptive, optimistic, and accommodating as the US government. If they wanted to add a device to the "plan", the tech guys, lawyers, compliance, medical staff, and various administrative yahoos would each take 6 months to come up with a decision, if they don't lose the paperwork.




In short.

Buy a xoom if you want a xoom outside of the hospital. If you can make it work, it's a bonus, but don't count on it.

 

[paul411]

many websites push you towards mobile versions, which handicaps the device.

Have you tried using Firefox or Skyfire? You can change your user-agent to trick websites into thinking you're on a regular desktop.

 

[jrae]

Thanks for the review.

i ended up contacting the IT departments where i work at 2/3 hospitals and of course, it is the "we don't support personal devices." But two use the same system and one nice IT guy did say that it was the same as for the iPad (using the Citrix receiver). I haven't actually purchased the xoom yet because I didn't want it to be completely useless at work. At the main hospital where I want it for they did say that if I could access it from home, I should be able to access it from my tablet but that "i would have to figure it out."

I guess the question is, how much do I see myself using it outside of work and is it worth spending my education fund on.

 

[hot sauce]

The tech guy at the last hospital I was at claimed that they were only going to support iOS for security reasons (single device and OS) and that for the foreseeable future they were not going to support android. Maybe it is possible to access it without support but I kind of doubt it and I'm sure it would be beyond most people's technical ability (certainly mine). This may change as I suspect android will soon be carving out a larger share of the tablet market.

I am not usually an apple person but I went with the ipad for the emr access and right now it has a more developed ecosystem.

 

[ajp529]

Check out the ASUS tranformer-basically the same thing as a Xoom, but cheaper and actually way better. Also you can get a docking keyboard that effectively expands the battery life to 15-16 hours and turns it into a netbook. I could see a lot of people using it as a laptop replacement since most just surf the web these days. Oh and if you do buy it beware of the price markups a lot of places are putting on these things-newegg is the place to go.