The era of mobile medicine has arrived with the introduction of Pocket Alteer, the first physician PDA (personal digital assistant) that integrates administrative and clinical information as well as functions into one product. Pocket Alteer provides a wireless extension to the Alteer business operating system, accessing the same patient-centric database that runs physician offices.
Developed by Alteer Corporation, an e-health company that deploys workflow management solutions for physicians via an ASP (application service provider), Microsoft Windows(R) CE-based Pocket Alteer is designed to enable physicians to practice medicine from any location -whether they are checking patient records before calling in a prescription, answering a patient-related page, dictating chart notes or reviewing their schedule for the day.
"Time is a valuable asset for today's physicians," said Charles Hearn, President & CEO of Alteer Corporation. "They work from hospitals, their offices, while traveling, and they often take patient charts home. With the introduction of Pocket Alteer, a physician can access, review, and act on important patient information real-time from anywhere, enhancing their productivity and documenting patient care. This is not another point solution in a handheld device, which addresses only one task in a physician's day. Pocket Alteer breaks the paper-chart paradigm and provides universal access to information at the point of care, wherever that may be. Not only that, it is also a valuable communication tool. Pocket Alteer ultimately represents the practical application of state-of-the-art technology, helping doctors save time and money."
Pocket Alteer's features include:
-- Secure access to patients' electronic medical records (EMRs) for clinical and demographic data, including medical problems, medications, allergies, last visit to the office and other contact information.
-- Schedule management, including patient appointments, surgeries and other events.
-- Processing of internal messages.
-- Ability to create new messages (written or dictated) for staff and other physicians in the practice.
-- Ability to create dictation records for patient files. Alteer Office allows for an easy method for transcribing these records through Internet transcription services.
-- Access to a centralized contact database shared with Alteer Office. The database of contacts includes physicians, pharmacies and other healthcare entities allowing physicians to easily communicate with their close circle of patient care partners.
Pocket Alteer can easily be synchronized with Alteer's centralized database via the physician's desktop PC, a dial-up modem or though a wireless phone. This allows physicians to update appointments, patient charts, and internal communication so they can have the information they need in or out of the office. Pocket Alteer is an integral extension of the database created in Alteer Office(TM), the collaborative clinical, financial and administrative solution for physician's offices.
Pocket Alteer takes advantage of a highly compressed audio file format created by Microsoft that allows physicians to dictate and send their messages via the Internet to transcription services or to attach these audio files to messages for their patients or staff to listen to.
Pocket Alteer runs on the new Pocket PCs powered by Microsoft Windows CE. The Windows CE environment allows for a more powerful and flexible platform for handheld applications in terms of storage and communication capabilities, giving physicians easy access to information they need, when they need it. Access to these resources is controlled and secure to ensure that patient information is kept confidential.
"What makes Pocket Alteer indispensable is the freedom it gives physicians from their office," said Francis H. Rhie, M.D., Alteer's Chief Medical Officer and a co-founder of the company. "When I was a practicing physician, I carried clinical notes, procedural steps, important statistics, patient information, and to-do lists, as well as administrative paperwork for my practice. Now Pocket Alteer allows physicians to have everything they need in a compact computer that literally fits in their pocket. Such a device has the power to revolutionize the practice of medicine by facilitating the management, storage, access and availability of information vital to doctors today."
Since Alteer's introduction to the marketplace in 1999, Microsoft platforms and products have been an integral component of its systems. Key Microsoft technologies incorporated into Alteer's practice management software include SQL Server 2000, Microsoft Operating Systems, eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and Smart Cards. By utilizing Microsoft technology, Alteer has created a uniform physician operating system with open architecture, allowing e-commerce and the Internet to be a viable and working strategy for physician offices.
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