Wow...that is pretty cool technology. We have the cows/wows in the hallways and they pretty much stay there. Occasionally I'll see a nurse actually take it with her into the room, but for the most part it's like having extra workstations down the hall. Most of the nurses chart electronically "when they have time" on the pc's at the nurse's station. So it isn't real-time like we want and it still seems like it takes a big chunk of their time to electronically chart. Could these PatientTouches be used for all nursing documentation? If yes, then it would truly be a valuable tool in the nurses pocket.

Perhaps we are at a turning point. If larger institutions could let go of the idea of ownership of medical data, then perhaps with the blossoming mobile technologies we can move into a new era of physician communication. I understand that many larger institutions make their data available for on staff physicians who wish to get ("pull") the data. But most doctors do not work this way, and wait for information to be pushed out to them. And the average PCP would need to have a dozen different accounts to gather data from all the locations their patients are care for.

If there were a nationally recognized clearing house for all clinical communication, then any doctor could send any other doctor.