PDAs

[- Femme -]

I was thinking about getting an iPhone to use @ work (hospital) but I'm not sure whether the phone & camera parts would be considered violation of HIPAA. I don't want to waste that much money & find out it's not permitted.

 

Anyway - for those of you who use PDAs @ work...what type do you have, what do you like about it, & how useful is it?

 

Need recommendations please. I've done some online research but I want to hear from people who actually been using it for a while.

[The Zack]

 

I was a Blackberry user for a long time because of its reliability in emailing and web. I wanted to try something different and decided to get the Motorola Droid that has been released last month. One of the things I like about this DROID phone is that it has an open development which means any one can create any application and put it on the Android market. Many of these apps are free. Also,this phone has the thinnest full QWERTY slider on the market which gives me a convenient way of typing emails and text. The browser has significantly been improved, pages load up in a fully zoomed-out mode, and the load times and scrolling are way snappier than the blackberry.

 

I wouldn't recommend the Iphone to anyone in the USA because it is exclusively available only for AT&T customers and AT&T's 3G coverage is very limited which means you won't be able to get the best out of your Iphone. Rumors say that this exclusivity will end sometime in 2010. If you live in Europe then definitely get the Iphone as it is now available for multiple carriers.

[Che -Guevara]

Femma...Are you gonna be using it for any medical applications or just checking your work emails or that sort of thing?

 

My best advice would be talk to your Health Information Manager or Health Information Technician at Medical Records Department. Most medical establishments should also have Compliance or Privacy officer. These people should be versed in anything HIPAA and should be able to tell you if smartphones are or be made HIPAA complaint.

[Nin-Yaaban]

I dunno if they still make PDA's anymore, but you might find one somewhere on the Internet if you look around. It doesn't sound like a fun place to work if you can't bring a camera phone with you.