March 2008 News Posts
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| Topic: |
Doctor,
Lawyer, Indian Chief |
Date: |
05/04/2003 |
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Doctor, Lawyer,
Indian Chief
In the last three
months my wife has been in and out of hospitals and doctors offices
more times than I want to count. It seems like every week I am
having to make 1-2 trips to the pharmacy to get prescriptions filled
and refilled. One thing I have noticed during the course of all this
is the prevalence of PDAs in the professional workplace,
specifically in the medical community.
I went with my wife
to the doctor’s office and the physician’s assistant
pulled a Palm Pilot out of his lab coat. Later the same day I was at
the pharmacy and one of the pharmacists was showing off her new Clie
NX70V to her fellow drug pushers (just kidding…). Recently I
even saw a photo on the television of an Army medic pulling out a
PDA of some sort to get information off it. That got me exploring
the use of PDAs in the medical profession and the impact that it has
made on that particular profession in the last several years.
Doctors, just like
Lawyers and members of many other professions, have been long viewed
as the more intelligent than most of us mere mortals due to the
extended schooling and training that they have to go through in
order to get their license. They then have to attend even more
training each year on new medications and procedures in order to
keep it. What if, however, they had all the latest information, say
on prescription drugs and their interactions, available in the palm
of their hand. One such company,
Skyscape,
offers just that.
I contacted Skyscape
for information regarding their Palm OS software and discovered an
entire new world of Palm software. Software developed by or marketed
through them includes reference databases for all typed of drugs as
well as natural products and over 100 different pieces of software
for over 25 different specialties.
I was fortunate
enough to interview Kelli Bravo, the Director of Marketing at
Skyscape, about her company and the use of PDAs in the medical
profession. (Note: I have edited the content of the interview
due to the length of the article after I finished. If you would like
to read the entire interview, and I would encourage it, you can
download it here.) Here are the
highlights of the interview:
Tell me a little about yourself. How long have you worked for
Skyscape and what do you do there.
I have been at Skyscape since July 2002. I am the Director of
Marketing and am responsible for our marketing strategy, corporate
communications, PR programs, our customer acquisition programs both
direct mail and email, our advertising, our hardware partnerships,
our bookstore sales programs and sales support.
How old is Skyscape and how did it get started?
Skyscape began evolving in 1993 and was started by our president and
CEO Sandeep Shah. Dr. Neeta Shah, a cardiologist at the Primary Care
Group in Webster, needed to find information about heart disease,
medication and other cardiology topics in one place and challenged
her husband, Sandeep Shah, to solve her problem.
Where did the name Skyscape come from?
The name evolved from Skyscape's ability to provide wireless,
handheld pda solutions across any platform. Skyscape provides the
handheld solutions for any landscape "Skyscape" for
communities of users. And the sky is really the limit on what
handhelds can provide mobile workers in all professionals especially
with the increase use of wireless.
Tell us some about your products.
Skyscape works with the world's leading medical publishers and
authors including FA Davis, McGraw-Hill, Lippincott Williams &
Wilkins and uses its patented technology to create handheld versions
of the best medical and nursing references. These "Powered by
Skyscape" trusted solutions have gained tremendous acceptance
amongst the medical community because of the quality of the content
provided by the our publishing partners, and the intuitive look and
feel of our software on the handheld. We currently have over 100
medical and nursing references covering over 25 specialties
including 5 Minute Clinical Consult an internal medicine reference
and our most popular resource; Essentials of Diagnosis and Treatment
also for internal medicine physicians, students and residents;
Davis's Drug Guide for Nurses; Physicians' Desk Reference another
drug guide; the Special Forces Operations Medical Handbook an
emergency medicine reference designed to help military and civilian
medical personnel out in the field, OCM/911 a bioterrorist agent
reference; and The Prescriber's Letter Handbook of Adverse Drug
Interactions a drug interaction guide. We currently provide clinical
references, drug guides, drug interaction guides and medical
dictionaries. Skyscape’s solutions are available on multiple
platforms including Palm OS®, Windows® CE, and Pocket PC.
Do you develop them yourselves or do you simply market them?
We enhance trusted publisher content for use on handheld devices.
The software development is done by us and with Skyscape's patented
smARTlink™ technology, doctors, nurses and healthcare
practitioners can easily cross-index with other clinical, drug, and
drug interaction solutions from Skyscape to provide medical and
nursing professionals with a powerful and integrated source of
information whenever and wherever they need it.
In your opinion, how prevalent is the use of PDA's in the
medical profession?
PDAs have taken a strong foothold in healthcare. We see PDA adoption
as bridging the last mile between medical professionals and
technology. PC's never really took off in medicine because they are
not mobile and put a barrier between the physician and patient. But
with over 30,000 patients dying every year due to medical errors,
clinicians are rapidly adopting solutions that provide up-to-date
clinical, drug and drug interaction information right at the patient’s
bedside. A Harris Interactive study estimates that 50% of physicians
will be using handhelds (PDAs) by 2004. An ACP-ASIM Survey finds
that nearly half its members already use handheld computers. Medical
and Nursing references for handhelds powered by Skyscape are used
every day by over 160,000 clinicians to help prevent medical errors.
And since our high-value solutions support the intuitive thought
processes of medical practitioners, we are helping them improve the
quality of care and reduce administrative time.
Do you think a patient would lose faith in a doctor if they were
seen to be referring to a PDA during an exam?
On the contrary, this increased access to information at the
patient's bedside allows the physician to spend more time with
patients (less time researching information back in the office),
reduces medical errors/call backs etc., and allows the physician to
allay fears by being able to point to another source for opinion.
See physician feedback:
In one particular case, a patient expressed her skepticism over
my diagnosis of panic disorder. Then came the dreaded "but how
do you know, doctor?" I calmly replied, "Why don't we just
consult the computer". I brought forth my PDA, accessed 5MCC
powered by Skyscape, and then Panic disorder and began to read from
the list of associated signs and symptoms. After several rounds of
my naming and her nodding ascension, the sale was closed with the
statement, "I guess you were right doctor."
Dan L. Field, MD, Emergency Medicine, The Permanente Medical Group
What does the future hold for Skyscape?
Currently, Skyscape is the leading provider of interactive,
intelligent mobile solutions for healthcare enterprises and
individual practitioners. Skyscape’s mobile platform enables
the enterprise-wide deployment of the industry’s most extensive
portfolio of handheld medical and nursing reference information to
improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare This is just the
beginning for Skyscape. Skyscape embraces the revolution in the use
of mobile devices extending from the individual practitioner to
communities of mobile professionals working collaboratively,
transacting, and referring, via connections to networked servers
whose reach extends to the enterprise and beyond. These high-value
professional communities will greatly benefit from information
access at their fingertips that will improve both the quality of
their professional work as well as their efficiency in handling the
administrative overhead that is part of today’s rapidly
changing business environment. In addition, these worldwide
communities are a growing focal point of the current and future
stakeholders in the medical, healthcare and pharmaceutical value
chains. Skyscape is the only company positioned to provide a single,
unified enterprise-wide technology platform to address the
individual interests of these various stakeholders by providing
powerful value-added solutions that will create the leaders in this
rapidly changing competitive landscape.
Are there any plans on expanding your market to other
professions such as the legal profession?
We believe in focusing our efforts to give the best we can to our
healthcare clients. However, the future does hold the opportunity
for us to branch out into other verticals.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Our team is proud that our solutions are helping the U.S military
medical personnel in their efforts abroad and that our handheld
references are seen as the 'Tools for Life' by many of our military
users. We all hope for their safe return and a quick end to this
conflict. We have always provided our users with free access to
OCM/911, a bioterrorist agent reference. Because of global events,
we have shifted our short-term priorities to make additional
resources from the CDC regarding biological and chemical agents
available.
The powerful and moving feedback we have received recently from our
military users has spurred us on even harder. See what I mean when
you hear what Randy Wobser says:
"Skyscape has been a Godsend to me when I was deployed. As you
may know, when deployed, one frequently practices beyond the scope
of one's specialty. The Skyscape titles I had access to allowed me
to correctly treat a wide spectrum of patients (including ICU, which
is not something we see much of in OB/GYN). It made me realize that
my Palm is the single most important tool to have when I
deploy--absolutely invaluable."
Randy W Wobser, MD, Dept. of OB/GYN 374th Medical Group, Tokyo,
Japan
Be sure to read next week’s Clie Connections article entitled, "Skyscape:
A Doctor in Your Pocket" in which I give mini-reviews on
several of Skyscape’s products.
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| Category: |
Clie
Connections |
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