Watch – out Bill — I'm wireless now too.
After a few months of watching and waiting, I did finally get a treo 600. It is a useful tool that combines the cellphone and PDA. It doesn't have any true paging technology (like Motorola's FLEX protocol) so it can't (yet) replace a pager. It should. Palm and Motorola had this idea five years ago .. I wonder why it didn't move into these devices.
While I do find the device useful as a PDA (it's got all of the old standbys installed: epocrates, 5mcc, shots) … and of course a phone … the best thing about this device is something that I thought was just a toy beforehand: Instant Messaging.
Huh? (you say) ..
For physicians who are not always in the office, this device can significantly improve your life. Since I work at the Miracle Center 1/2 time … and I'm at the office 1/2 time, I'm often getting pages from one when I'm at the other. I can't leave a meeting, or interrupt a patient visit to make a phone call, but I CAN respond to an IM quickly and without too much distraction.
Nurse Kathy and I had several little conversations last week with IM. It saved me four or five phone calls … and got her immediate answers to her patient care questions .. so patients got better service.
I'm using chatter - which is a wonderful little program .. and she's using yahoo. Yeh .. not very secure. So no PHI. I've looked into Jabber — and we'll probably use that once I can figure out how to install a jabber server.
