[log in to unmask],Net writes:
>Ok, it's an old chestnut, and, I know, you just _lurv_ your laptop
>Ahmad,
>but what do you see in them?  My partner has one.  It was awkward
>loading
>and using portable EMIS, the modem sometimes doesn't work, the screen
>refresh is slow, I can't download all the practice patients onto it for
>home
>visits without locking out their records, it's not pocketable, but
>above all
>it's easily breakable and an obvious theft target.

>So come on Ten _GOOD_ reasons why.....  ;-)


>Dr G Mark Trowell

Last week I sat in a meeting with the HA, making contemporaneous notes
which were shared with other LMC members by e-mail immediately
afterward, and will go to a Web page in due course when we agree our
accounts, without being retyped.  I cold have done that on the Palm
Pilot but it was more effective to take the laptop in.

At the same meeting I was referring to a considerable number of
documents, which I suppose I could have in an indexed and searchable
form on paper, but I have not the time or staff to do so.

I went on to do my branch surgery, 
THere is no land line, nor do I want one, the expense is comparable to
a laptop each year!
When patients came in I consulted the _copy_ of the notes I hold on the
laptop, without locking out the original since it is only for reading,
and thus had access to almost all of their notes.
I made notes in a rather simpler fashion than the approach EMIS took to
doing this, and they appear as messages to the clinical record, which
become incorporated into the main record when the laptop next returns
to the main base.

While there, in a quiet patch, I read several documents downloaded at
another time from the Web relating to the New NHS, and prepared
comments relatig to them for further discussion.  I could I suppose
have dictated them and then paid somebody else to type them, but when I
am thinking about a document I like to do it myself.

I downloaded my e-mail this morning and here I am in another place,
replying to it on the same machine.
I cold have a virtual private network uniting the surgery and home,
using the loical cable firm, and perhaps I will, but meanwhile this
works.

Best Evidence runs on it, and I find this handy when I am thinking what
to do with a patient, and I suppose I could add the eBNF, but havn't
yet.

Is that up to 10 yet?


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