Philips unveils the Cliniscape medical tablet PC

Although the tablet form factor hasn't exactly taken the consumer market by storm, they're ideal for specialized applications like medicine, and Philips' Cliniscape "Mobile Clinical Assistant" is the latest device to target the hospitals. Designed by Intel's Digital Health Group, the Cliniscape features a 10.4-inch touch screen, a custom installation of Vista Business running on a Core Solo processor with 1GB of RAM, a 60GB disk, 802.11n, RFID and Bluetooth radios, barcode scanner, a 2 megapixel camera, 3.5-hour battery and a single USB port, all contained in a sealed "medical-grade" enclosure that can be wiped clean with disinfectant and withstand a 1 meter drop. When docked in the "grab-and-go" base station, the Cliniscape can be used as a desktop machine with three additional USB ports and an Ethernet jack. Philips says software vendors are working to optimize their patient-care apps for the MCA platform, and that the Cliniscape should be on sale in Spring 2008.

[DickHardknocks @ Oct 22nd 2007 7:40PM]

Oh MY GOD...

We were suppossed to give this man a CIRCULAR INCISION...

A Typo caused us to give him a CIRCUMCISION.

[kdMo @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:13PM]

I think in this model the penis would have been pre-barcoded.

[Rich White @ Oct 22nd 2007 7:49PM]

Cool ... welcome to 2007 LOL, this stuff is cooler on a surface like here:
http://edusim3D.org

Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVFsxev-2sk

[Rich White @ Oct 22nd 2007 7:51PM]

thats http://edusim3d.com (not org) *lol*

[bombastinator @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:45PM]

*down the hallway a URL sat staring at his bandaged crotch, whimpering quietly*

[Ewok in Tokyo @ Oct 22nd 2007 8:59PM]

The potential of stuff like this is amazing. Have the monitoring equipment hooked up to the network via ethernet with wifi for fallback and you can monitor for changes and quickly and easily bring up the patients history.

Ask any nurse what the biggest and best change to their job has been and almost all will tell you its the IV machines that regulate the flow of an IV drip. This stuff will take nursing to the next level. *drools at the idea of RFID and barcode scanning in a tablet*

[Shadyman @ Oct 22nd 2007 9:42PM]

3.5-hour battery life? That's all? I mean, it's impressive, but how long are doctors' shifts?

[John Doe @ Oct 22nd 2007 9:49PM]

They don't seem yet to have figured out that you don't need a full computer, all you need is a VNC head, or something along the lines of the distributed computer model that SUN was working on so long ago. That way you would end up constructing something more like a pancake-cell phone than a compacted laptop.

[Abuzar @ Oct 22nd 2007 10:16PM]

These are for nurses not doctors...

[g2 @ Oct 22nd 2007 10:22PM]

Now the docs can surf the net all day like the rest of us :)

[Wwhat @ Oct 22nd 2007 11:09PM]

O jesus, philips and vista combined, that's the most lethal combination in technical history, and they are proposing to use it in a critical setting..

[bollewolle @ Oct 23rd 2007 3:24AM]

FYI, Philips is one of the biggest providers of Medical Systems in the world. I am pretty sure that if you ever have been in a scanner in a hospital is was most probably build by Philips.

[Wwhat @ Oct 25th 2007 12:38AM]

And you wonder why I avoid hospitals..

[Wwhat @ Oct 25th 2007 7:30PM]

Oh and I think you'll find most medical scanners are made by GE (general electric).
Not sure why you claim philips is bigger, you must be an employee or something.

[Mikey @ Oct 22nd 2007 11:24PM]

OH NO! Hes crashing! How much (insert drug) should I give him? I know. I'll look it up on my trusty Mobile Clinical Assistant.

"Page has taken longer than expected to respond. Please try again later..."

Don't the specs seem a bit low? I know my comp gets bogged down using tabbed browsers. I don't know how the programs would work. If it was similar by having tabs for each patient in a case load, couldn't there be issues?

[Jonny @ Oct 22nd 2007 11:56PM]

I'm a doc and we use the lenovo x41 tablets. I personally can't see a tablet without a keyboard being as useful as there are times when I want to type my itmes in. The virtual keyboard just doesn't cut it. The specs on this are plenty fast....we use the old Pentium M version and it's fine.

[JZ @ Oct 23rd 2007 10:17AM]

When plugged into the docking station a usb mouse and keyboard are easy to integrate. I can see where this would be better for certain aspects of physician documentation and patient interviewing.

For the most part, vital sign monitoring and other documentation to include lab instructions, etc would be handled by the charge nurse or the attending physician through the main computer terminal at the nurses' station.

The main problem with tablets is of course the battery life and the potential for theft. Educate physicians and nurses to return it to the docking station when not in use or to plug it into one when using it from time to time and that issue is easily solved.

More and more ED applications are being written to accomodate these tablets as well as micro computers, pda's and other portable/wireless devices. The general implimentation however is slower because of some resistance by many physicians to adapt to new technologies.

[dmihalic @ Oct 23rd 2007 10:35AM]

This is the kind of thing that I fight for at my hospital ALL of the time. Granted, it won't eliminate errors all together, but it will eliminate traditional deadly errors like illegible handwriting, unlabled use or off-policy use of drugs, etc.... Yes, it can generate a new kind of error with menu selection mis-matches, but these can be attenuated with flexible, dynamic programming (adjustment of menu selections to prevent confirmational bias, hard-stops, etc).

Problem is, this crap costs SERIOUS money and invariably, won't want to play well with 'legacy' hospital systems (which is a rather insurmountable problem at our hospital right now). Finally, it's running Vista, which would give the IT department a coronary (to consider a Vista platform when we've only recently finally gotten to WinXP (last 2.5 years) would not go well.)

[blah @ Oct 25th 2007 8:04PM]

If they had just paid an intern 50 bucks to consult with them, they would have realized that any "portable" device for doctors needs to fit in a white coat pocket. What a waste.

[IceDoc @ Dec 9th 2007 10:47PM]

Does anyone know if Apple is working on this?? Can you imagine..touchscreen, super images, DICOM, etc etc...