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We have asked to Dr. Vignetti, an investigator and physician with a huge experience in the field of clinical practice, which operational opportunities does the digital clinical case history ClinicOnline® on the Apple iPhone offer. The interview questions are aimed to bring into light the system operational features, if any, in terms of: utility and working scenarios within the medical practice; efficacy, efficiency and economical services for healthcare centers; new prospects for medical teams
New technologies can, indeed, trigger enthusiasm for the prospects that reveal but also fear or resistance towards a changing environment. As a doctor, do you think having the possibility of accessing your patients' clinical case histories by means of a portable tool as an iPhone has any advantage? Are there any particular situations in which you have frequently used ClinicOnline® on the iPhone or in which you may consider this technological solution as a decisive one compared to traditional systems?
I have most of all used ClinicOnline® on the iPhone when I was not in my office, generally on a trip and most of all traveling by train. I think it is really useful. In particular, there is a psychological highlight, which, as far as I am concerned, is very important. To know that you can have access to data anytime, check a piece of information, add or cancel an appointment or to be able to check a blood count is really reassuring, even if in that very moment there is little connectivity and I need to wait for half an hour in order to do so, as it allows me to quickly face and solve a problem or to comply with a patient's request.
I appreciate the main advantage of such a solution when I am around in a “non conventional” way, for example, having a walk or on a non-business trip -and, thus, without all my equipment-, during the weekends, on sundays or at dinner with friends. A telephone call arrives and I can quickly access the system and solve the problem.
I have also tried to use it within the medical ward, as a portable tool from room to room, or even in an office where there was no computer available, and also in these situations the main limit of the system was connectivity; if there was always a wireless connection it would be perfect.
It is quite complicated to register data with an iPhone. One of the main features of the ClinicOnline® system of Sinaptica IT is the possibility of cloning events, a feature that makes entering data far more simple as you only need to duplicate a previous event and change a few pieces of data, which makes it all really simple. On the other side, if we think of normal data entry I do not think it can substitute a portable computer at the moment, but for sure they complement each other.
Nowadays, the paradigm “Efficacy, Efficiency and Economical Services” is more and more used to evaluate professional performances and public or private services. Do you think that ClinicOnline® on the iPhone can rationalize, in that sense, the activities of a healthcare center?
More and more, cellular phones bring an increase in the quantity of information a doctor receives from his patients, and, on the other side, patients expect to be able to get in touch with their doctor at any time. You may think this is more or less fair, but a doctor that keeps his cellular phone off is considered to be little trustworthy. Thus, thanks to cellular phones, doctors are receiving a quantity of information and requests that has considerably grown in the last ten years.
Quite often, these requests generate other activities of which doctors make mental note of or even write them down in a piece of paper. I think it is really useful to have a tool that lets you, on the one side, receive a request and, on the other, change an appointment or check and register a therapy; and that allows you to quickly register the problem that the patient is presenting to you, writing down the information or changing a given appointment. This means that it increases safety, as the same information that used to be lost or forgotten is now registered.
I could list thousands of these examples. Not long ago, within three hours, a patient phoned me and a colleague of mine to make the same question, without informing me or him about the other phone call. In this case, both of us gave him the same answer, giving him the same appointment at the same daytime, and when we told each other we were dumbstruck. A tool like this one can solve the problem immediately, as if the phone call is registered “Mr x phoned, I told him to come at five”, next time, information is available.
A technological device that gives physicians immediate access to patients’ information without any physical tie: which new prospects are likely to influence team work?
I can really think of a whole list of new prospects for such a system, most of all linked to text messaging which, to my opinion, are far more interesting than a mere system that can be managed on a cellular phone.
In practical terms, what a cell phone is supposed to do is to transfer to other colleagues data concerning something that is happening, that has happened or of something new. I see it as a registration, an alert regarding a deviation from a pre-established protocol.
Suppose we know that we have to give a certain therapy to a patient daily in the afternoon. In the meanwhile, something happens; I get to know it thanks to the patient himself that notifies it to me or thanks to the event that he has changed. At that very moment, this information automatically reaches all other colleagues, via cellular phone; a piece of information managed by the system, that remains registered and traced, in case it needs to be accessed again.
We presently do the same but with thousand phone calls, or with SMSs, or , rarely, via e-mail, as the main problem of this situations is not having a computer at hand.
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