Patignt-borne memory device facilitates "point of care" data access

Although electronic medical records and a central database have made accura te and consistent patient medical information more readily available than w ith the traditional patient chart, there are many locations in healthcare f acilities where terminals for accessing patient data are nor. available. As patient care becomes decentralized and more patients require anesthesia ou tside of the operating suites, routing a network-based system to all these locations can be expensive and time consuming. We designed a system whereby essential patient data of interest to anesthesiologists is stored on an el ectronic memory device the size of a watch battery attached to the patient' s wristband. Accessing and editing the data is done via a handheld computer . This system provides secure patient data storage and management at the "p oint of care." At the conclusion of the patient's anesthesia-related care, the data is downloaded to a relational database for use in outcome analysis , billing, and quality assurance. After collecting preoperative evaluations , intraoperative data, and postoperative data on 560 patients anesthetized for surgery or other procedures. we find this system to be a reliable, lon cost, medical information management system, with possible application to o ther medical specialties.