Duke University Health Systems (DUHS) has completed the first phase of its mobile computing initiative with its deployment of PatientKeeper Platform.

DUHS's more than 300 physicians, residents, and medical and nursing students can now gain wireless access to real-time clinical data from disparate information systems in various regional locations via the open architecture of the platform.

Paul Debien, DUHS's director of mobile computing, said that innovative technologies support the primary missions of Duke University Health System, patient care, research and medical education.

Debien said that DUHS's deployment model addresses its high-intensity inpatient and outpatient environment.

"While we think this model will have application to other health systems, those institutions will need to be determined if our model would be of use in their health care environment," said Debien. "We are very willing to share our successful deployment strategies as well as those that need improvement."

Asif Ahmad, DUHS's vice president and CIO, said that DUHS's mobile computing initiative, which is among the top 10 initiatives for the Health System technology strategic plan, embraces the realities of today and the possibilities of the future of mobile computing.

Stephen Hau, vice president of marketing and business development for PatientKeeper, said that the Duke announcement was very important for several reasons.

"Many hospitals across the country look to Duke as an example of what IT to embrace and deploy," said Hau. "Duke is taking a staged approach to deploy across the entire health system - making the PDA a solution that spans multiple hospitals and multiple information systems, giving physicians at Duke only one system to learn to get their clinical information."

Hau added that Duke plans to continue building new applications on the PatientKeepr Platform, which will then be made available to other PatientKeeper clients. Debien said, "We are looking to use PatientKeeper application delivery technology to efficiently provide other application types—medical reference, forms, dictation, financial—to the caregiver."

Future expanded deployment will also be used across DUHS's organization, which includes the Duke University Medical Center, Durham Regional Hospital and Duke Health Raleigh Hospital.

DUHS chose PatientKeeper because the company met DUHS's mobile computing system requirements, which included among other requirements the ability to use multiple interfaces to connect to diverse hospital information systems, distribute and receive data from Pocket PC and Palm PDA devices, and provide a software development kit capability to DUHS for development of its own applications within PatientKeeper.

While DUHS is an early adopter of mobile computing, Hau said that PatientKeeper believes that the mobile/wireless market has entered the "early mainstream" phase.