Background The Royal College of Anaesthetists' has released an official electronic anaesthetic logbook program for the PC and Mac computers. It has been recognised that many anaesthetists wish to use handheld computers or 'PDA's to collect case information for this PC based logbook. Following the discontinuation of the Psion series of handheld computers (which were used by many), the two leading types of PDA are the Pocket PC (e.g. IPAQ) and the Palm (e.g. Palm m505, Sony Clie etc.) It was decided that, in view of the popularity of data collection using a PDA, a Pocket PC and Palm application would be developed that would integrate as far
as possible with the PC logbook. HanDBase is a popular shareware database program available for both Palm and Pocket PC. This database costs $29.99 and is available to purchase using a credit card and download from
their website The decision to use HanDBase for the PDA logbook was made based on the following:
1. HanDBase is available for both Palm and Pocket PC and therefore a single logbook could be developed that would work on both types of machine. Also HanDBase supports both the Windows and Macintosh personal
computers. 2. The HanDBase platform, as a commercial program, is stable and technical support, development and upgrades would be handled by its own developers, DDH Software. 3. Developing, maintaining
and supporting a single logbook would be more efficient, quicker, cheaper and require less resources than producing two full, standalone logbook programs for the Palm and Pocket PC from scratch.
The following instructions will show you how to install HanDBase and the logbook, how to use your PDA logbook to collect case information and how to export your PDA logbook to your PC logbook to analyse the
information and create reports. |