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‘Specially for Children, located in Austin, Texas, is a premier regional pediatric group of physicians committed to treating children of all ages who have serious illnesses or complex medical conditions. As the only group of its kind in the Austin/Travis County area, ‘Specially for Children has played an integral role in the development of a comprehensive, pediatric, multi-disciplinary team approach to caring for children.
THE CHALLENGE
The need for the services provided by ‘Specially for Children has continued to increase, placing extra demands on the group’s physicians. To increase their efficiency, doctors began carrying multiple devices including cell phones, pagers and PDAs.
While these devices offered the needed functionality to stay in touch with the office, consult with other physicians and manage their schedules, it was cumbersome and time-consuming to manage three separate devices. In addition, physicians would have to wait until they were back at the office or at home to check and respond to their e-mail messages—not an ideal situation as more and more people in the healthcare field use e-mail and expectations for quick responses increase.
“At ‘Specially for Children, we saw that wireless and integrated handheld technologies had become mature enough to begin evaluating a better solution for our physicians,” said Zachery Jiwa, CIO for ‘Specially for Children. “It was time to do away with doctors’ ‘Batman belts’ and arm them with a single integrated device for wireless messaging, calendaring and contacts.”
The Solution
Good Mobile Messaging, the Palm Treo, and Carrier Service from Cingular
As Zachery began looking for a solution, he evaluated Good Technology, Research In Motion (RIM®) and Seven. RIM was dismissed early on mostly because of its proprietary operating system. “Because there are a lot of specialty medical programs available for handhelds, it was important that we went with a solution that could support the platforms these applications ran on,” said Jiwa.
The choice was then between Good and Seven. Zachery put Good Mobile Messaging on some Treos and gave the handhelds to a few key doctors to get their feedback. “Once they were able to see everything running on one handheld they were sold,” said Jiwa. “Good also provided the administrative tools such as Over-the-Air provisioning that I needed to make my job easier and supported multiple handhelds so we wouldn’t be locked into a single solution.”
Based on the doctors’ feedback and the fact that Good provided better synchronization with enterprise e-mail and personal information management (PIM) systems such as Microsoft® Outlook® and Lotus® Notes,® Zachery decided to go with Good Mobile Messaging for its wireless communications solution.
“After looking at all the alternatives, Good Mobile Messaging was the clear choice because it provided the best combination of real-time information, the administrative tools I needed and the support for multiple operating systems and handhelds,” said Jiwa.
Now, each physician at ‘Specially for Children has a Palm Treo running Good Mobile Messaging with carrier service from Cingular.
THE RESULTS
Typically, physicians start their day at the hospital visiting patients. They then go to the ‘Specially for Children facility to prepare for their daily schedule of appointments. This preparation usually includes conducting research, consulting with other doctors and working with nurses and the administrative staff. Following a full day of appointments, most doctors will go back to the hospital to make their final rounds before going home.
With Good Mobile Messaging running on the Palm Treo, doctors now have all the information they need at their fingertips to make their day more efficient and effective. With up-to-date contacts, the day’s current list of appointments and e-mail messages all on their Treo, physicians can quickly send an e-mail to another doctor to consult about a patient, check and reply to important incoming e-mail messages during a break, communicate with nurses while they are away from the facility and rearrange appointments if something more important arises during the day.
“Good Mobile Messaging has changed our doctors’ lives,” said Jiwa. “Until they had it in their hands, they really didn’t have a sense of how much it would improve their workday. What’s really important, however, is that they can now spend more personal time with patients. This is critical because it helps us meet our goal of providing a positive, healing atmosphere for children who have serious illnesses.”
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