Panasonic Toughbook MCA launched

A new mobile clinical assistant, billed as “designed for nurses by nurses” will be officially launched today at the World of Health IT conference in Copenhagen.

The device which marks the latest development on the fast evolving mobile clinical assistant, rugged tablet PC market for healthcare, has been developed with extensive input and feedback from clinicians.

The tablet device is designed for hand-held use, and is lightweight, spill-resistant, drop-tolerant and easily disinfected, allowing mobility and networking within an existing IT landscape of hospitals.

The MCA is based on Intel’s MCA reference design. Suppliers including Motion Computing, Panasonic and Philips are now all offering MCA-style devices designed for clinical users. Panasonic’s MCA is the first to use the Intel Atom processor.

Panasonic gave a sneak peak of the MCA at the UK Healthcare Interoperability event last week and is currently running a series of UK roadshows.

In the UK a number of NHS trusts are now using Panasonic’s “ruggedised” Toughbooks for bedside and community-based services. But the Intel Atom-based MCA promises to be smaller and lighter.

In a video clip on the MCA roadshow website, NHS Connecting for Health clinical architect Dr Mike Bainbridge says that the National Programme for IT in the NHS first started looking for something that clinicians could carry around sensibly in 2003.

He says pilots of the new device suggest it “gives us an opportunity to give clinicians something that makes their lives easier, one, that will make patient care better, two, and that will make patient care safer, three; and that is what we want to achieve.”