For many years, technology has played an important role in healthcare, starting with pagers and cellular phones. I'm in constant need to communicate and interact with other healthcare professionals and to be able to perform patient care tasks from remote locations. Although desktop computers and Internet solutions have become more prevalent in healthcare information management, I've found these solutions within hospitals to be poorly implemented. Even when there's a desktop solution that's somewhat valuable to use, workflow is hindered because doctors must go to computer stations to access that data instead of being able to manage data at the patient bedside or point of care.

Palm solutions
The one piece of technology that has had the most significant impact on my professional life is my Palm Vx. The last couple of years have been extremely exciting in healthcare, as I've witnessed the growth and popularity of Palm solutions among my colleagues and within the healthcare industry as a whole. This is especially exciting since, as a group, physicians have historically been accused of resisting change and technology, particularly when such changes affect the way we practice medicine.

I can tell you that with the popularity of Palm handhelds in healthcare, physicians have finally found a device that can solve the challenges of managing healthcare information with the security, mobility, and connectivity required in this marketplace. Further, the use of Palm devices in healthcare is shaping the way healthcare professionals are practicing medicine in the new millennium.

In this article, I'll try to summarize and highlight some practical ways to use customized, basic productivity solutions to manage your healthcare information.

Database solutions
Almost everyone can benefit from using a database application, such as JFile (at http://www.land-j.com/jfile.html), HanDbase (at http://www.ddhsoftware.com/software.html?view=handbase), Pendragon Forms (at http://www.pendragon-software.com), or Satellite Forms (at http://www.pumatech.com/Satellite_Forms_Standard.html). These solutions allow you to create custom fields to store just about anything you can imagine. When I was in my residency, I created a procedure log in JFile to track my surgical procedures. This was a great time-saver for me since I could enter procedures as soon as they were completed and the details were readily available.