"MPOE is critically important to hospitals as they seek cost-effective IT solutions that physicians will adopt to make progress towards fully computerized physician order entry," claims Ying. "As the healthcare industry's emphasis on mobility and error reduction intensifies, we feel confident that MPOE will become indispensable as both a stand-alone solution and a complementary system in hospitals' order entry strategies."

The company expects complete ActivOrders functionality to be available by the end of the year to its customers utilizing MEDITECH, McKesson, Siemens, IDX, and other hospital information systems.

Simple interface and mobility are critical for the adoption of MPOE
Given that simplicity is the key to handheld use in any hospital environment, physicians are not likely to click through 15 screens on a 2" PDA display to make one precise order.

According to Gartner Healthcare VP and Research Director Kenneth Kleinberg, progress towards enabling the use of mobile handheld devices for even basic order entry will require a focus on intuitive completion of frequent orders and on context-sensitive menus. Ultimately, users will judge ease-of-use success by demonstrating adoption while standing at the patient's bedside, walking down corridors, or while sipping coffee in the lounge.

With the significant penetration of various portable devices and connectivity solutions, the healthcare user market has clearly -- and preferentially -- adopted some mobile technologies. Leveraging highly adopted mobile technologies will facilitate integration of CPOE into this user market. One of the clear winners in clinician user adoption is the PDA.

MPOE is a practical alternative to complex, expensive CPOE systems
Based on recent studies performed by the California Healthcare Foundation, the American Hospital Association, the Leapfrog Group, and the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement, the average cost to implement a CPOE system is $4.4 million in up-front fees with $500,000 in annual expenses.

This is the average cost that a 200-bed single hospital would have to incur, not a large, multi-facility healthcare organization, for whom the cost would be far, far more. Considering this cost profile and the surprisingly low average hospital profit margins of 2%, CPOE systems remain largely out of reach for many organizations. With such conditions, the only option for the vast majority of hospitals, unfortunately, is to attempt to have everything ... or, often more likely, to have nothing.

But hospitals that understand the value of MPOE can soon leverage mobile data delivery systems, which consistently demonstrate a high user adoption rate and enhance clinical workflow while costing an average of $250,000 in up-front fees with $50,000 in annual expenses, a fraction of the CPOE cost model.

By appropriately adding MPOE functionality to a solidly adopted handheld technology, such as mobile data delivery, hospitals can achieve the majority of essential benefits in a comprehensive CPOE system at a fraction of the cost.

Christine Harland Williams is President of Harland Communications and tracks handheld solutions used in the enterprise. She can be reached at http://www.harlandwebs.com.