Will you get an iPod during your next hospital stay?

August 7th, 2009

By Lynda

Silicon Alley Editor Nicholas Carlson thinks you should.  Carlson wrote an interesting post this week about a recent hospital stay he had as a result of a broken foot.  He shares his story of discomfort when he endured chills and tremors during a routine bandage change in the middle of night because the resident didn’t have the chart that would have forewarned her of the recurring chills.

Carlson wrote, “Here’s why this was all so frustrating: The resident should have known I’d get the tremors so bad, coming out of my sleep like that. It’d been happening for days.”

He points to the lack of easy information flow as the problem and points to a stat by Consumer Reports that shows less than 2 percent of hospitals in the U.S. have comprehensive electronic records systems that make patient information readily available anywhere in the hospital.

Carlson suggests that renting iPod Touches to patients including an app that allows them to keep notes and synch the medical information between the nurse and doctor, whom would also carry iPods, could be a practical solution.

He writes, “The notes could be video, text, audio, or photographic. I’ve had several nurses thank me for showing them a picture of the wound I keep on my iPhone before they re-do the bandages. It helps them proceed carefully and plan ahead.”

At Diagnosis PR, we’ve blogged about electronic patient records in the past, but Carlson may be onto something here as well, what do you think?

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