INTRODUCTION
What is Evidence-Based Medicine?
What is Point-of-Care Testing?
What are the Benefits of Point-of-Care Testing?
Why Do Hospitals and Clinics Need Epocare?
Disciplines Involved in Creating Epocare
Phase '0': Proof of Concept
Phase '0': Proof of Concept
A few years before the official EPoCare project had begun, an experiment had been conducted at Toronto General Hospital using a mobile evidence cart. Physicians there used the rolling cart (outfitted with a laptop computer, a projector for the laptop, a printer, a simulscope, and a physical exam textbook) to retrieve pertinent clinical research information during their rounds.
Although the cart's laptop was filled with evidence databases, the lack of an efficient search engine and electronic database organization prevented quick results. Search times often exceeded 30 seconds-too slow for rushed physicians, who wanted results in less than 20 seconds. The large size of the cart itself was also an impediment to physicians in a hospital, where they frequently move from one room or floor to another.
A brief experiment involving PDAs, wirelessly connected to the hospital's electronic evidence resources, was done in the hospital shortly after the 'cart' experiment. As with the cart, the search engine available for the PDAs' software prevented sufficiently fast physician access to evidence resources.