Stanford hospital invaded by “smart” cows
I was over at Stanford University Hospital today visiting Maryam’s mom, who had knee surgery. Anyway, two weeks ago they computerized their patient records. They have these portable data systems, all hooked in via wifi, all running Windows XP. They call them “cows.” Each one has a unique name. A nurse uses them to track patient data. Doctors can dial into the “cow” from his/her desk. Pretty cool stuff happening in hospitals lately.
Here Daisy Martinez, nurse at the hospital, shows off her “cow.”
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August 22nd, 2006 at 12:37 am
I think “Daisy Vaca” is the name of the “cow” unit not the nurse.
Vaca is spanish for cow after all.
August 22nd, 2006 at 12:43 am
Ooppsss, you’re right. Her name is Daisy Martinez. It’s her “cow” so, that fits. I’ll fix that.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:25 am
Hopefully this helps reduce the number of patients who get mixed-up with others (i.e. getting a new nose when they needed knee surgery).
It would be funny if the computer “moo’ed” when a mistake was made!
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:03 am
COW = Computer on Wheels
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:18 am
Funny, I was thinking cow was “Chart on wheels” since it is used for patients charts…
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:46 am
Jeff: Chart On Wheels makes TOTAL sense!
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Cool post from Microsoft’s medical expert: http://blogs.msdn.com/healthblog/archive/2006/08/22/713260.aspx
August 22nd, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Right now, for infusion systems, if they’re smart enough…
They’ll block you from putting in an absurd number (say, you type 6.0 instead of 0.6), which is better than an alert after you make the mistake.
But I agree that it would be funny if it moo-ed. :)
Maybe if it detects something that the system can’t pre-emptively block.
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:37 am
We had to stop calling our wireless carts “cows” because a patient thought a nurse was referring insultingly to her.
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:46 am
I didn’t like the term, anyway. It might have been more appropriate if we were running Gateways (do they still come in spotted boxes?).
We tried to talk to them about tablets. Think a patient would ever complain of being called a tablet? Of course not!
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:25 am
[...] The Scobleizer describes Stanford University Hospital’s “cows”. Really, they’re mobile patient record access points, networked via WiFi, running Windows XP. [...]
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:55 am
Does Stanford not submit any physician orders with theirs? That’s the primary function for our carts. From what I’m reading here, I’m starting to conclude that Stanford’s machines have more of a passive role (display information) than an active one. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
August 25th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Overlake Medical Seattle (Bellevue) has this same sort of thing.
The huge advantage is that admitting comes to you in the ER rather than you having to go to it…