Issue 123 Item 1 Diabetes Nurses Use PDAs in Patient Care

Patients with diabetes get faster attention with fewer potential errors thanks to nurses with personal data assistants (PDAs). The pilot project puts patient medical information into nurses’ hands with Palm PDAs and MData software from MercuryMD.

In the 4-month pilot, diabetes nurses downloaded medical information about patients by placing their Palms into one of several docking towers. Patients who had blood sugar levels that were either too high or too low (greater than 200 or less than 70 mg/dL) were flagged for the team for immediate attention.

"The previous way was by physician or nurse referral. If they were not able to send a referral, the potential was there for a patient to get ‘lost,’" Diane Newby, director, Moses Cone Health System Diabetes Treatment Program, said. "The new process is more data driven and has the potential to eliminate human error."

Besides improving care for patients, the system saves time for time-strapped nurses. Newby estimates each nurse saves at least 2 hours a day. "It allows the nurses to focus their energy where it is needed thereby saving time previously taken up by searching the system for diabetes patients with blood sugars out of control. The population ‘comes to them’ rather than them taking their time to search out the population," Newby said.

"Early detection and treatment is crucial in managing chronic diseases like diabetes in the hospital environment," commented Alan Ying, CEO of MercuryMD, the company that developed MData. "MData initially empowered physicians at Moses Cone Health System with current, comprehensive patient data on their handhelds. Now MData filters patients based on defined clinical data triggers, such as blood sugar levels, to automatically alert clinicians of undetected disease states and prompt immediate care." This article was prepared by Diabetes Week editors from staff and other reports.