CHS 7X and 7XRx with Apple iPad, iPhone and BlackBerry Tour

Ever since we released our first wireless 2D barcode scanners in January, Socket Mobile has been focused on maximizing support for these scanners with the most popular computers and devices in point-of-care healthcare applications.

There is a huge opportunity for the Socket Bluetooth® Cordless Hand Scanner (CHS) 7X and 7XRx in healthcare, where global patient safety initiatives are resulting in greater adoption of barcode scanning for medication administration as well as for other applications such as tracking surgical tools before and after an operation so items don't get left inside a patient.

In May, The New England Journal of Medicine published a report that showed that hospital units that used barcode scanning during medication administration had 41.4% fewer medication errors, 50.8% fewer potential adverse drug events, and 100% of transcription errors eliminated.

When first released to market, the CHS 7X and 7XRx already supported Windows tablets, PCs and PDAs to work with most electronic medical records, asset tracking systems, and other critical applications used in hospitals or home healthcare today.

CHS 7XRx with Panasonic Toughbook

This month, Socket became an official Panasonic Healthcare Hardware Partner to provide barcode scanners for their Toughbook line of computers, which includes rugged and splash-proof medical tablet PCs.

With 94% of physicians already using smartphones, hospitals in the U.S. and Japan beginning to deploy the iPad, and many home healthcare agencies switching to handheld devices for nursing documentation, Socket found it necessary to also support the latest Apple and BlackBerry devices in order to best serve the healthcare market.

In April, we added support for the iPad, and followed with compatibility with the iPhone and iPod touch in June. This month, we not only added support for the latest BlackBerry smartphones, but also announced a new line of low-cost, laser-based barcode scanners for Apple devices.

According to research firm Spyglass Consulting Group, the Apple iPhone is a favorite among doctors, accounting for 44% of the physician smartphone market, while BlackBerry has a 25% share. Socket partner Epocrates conducted a survey of 350 clinicians and found that one in five physicians plan to buy an iPad within the first year of its release.

Healthcare professionals have been responding positively to the Socket barcode scanners. Iltifat Husain, a medical student who founded the iMedicalApps blog, wrote, “I could definitely see something like this being valuable in the mobile clinic setting or home health visits — where Wi-Fi might not be available — and the ability to tag medications given, and then use the iPhone’s 3G service to upload the data would prove to be a valuable tool.”

Hospital pharmacist Jerry Fahrni wrote in the RxInformatics blog that the lightweight CHS 7X and Apple iPad might be more effective for barcode medication administration than the Bluetooth barcode scanner and tablet PC currently used at his facility because nurses would be more willing to adopt devices that are easy to carry.

Similarly, home healthcare providers often prefer smartphones or PDAs over large laptop or tablet PCs because they are less intimidating to patients. At last year's annual meeting of the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, researchers reported that 74.6% of home health agencies that intend to change the way aides document personal care plan to switch to handheld devices.

Many hospitals and medical clinics around the U.S. have already purchased units of the 7X or 7XRx and are currently testing them in the field. We are also working with some leading healthcare software vendors who have successfully deployed iPhone apps and are interested in the 7X not just for the iPhone but also iPad applications still under development.

To view videos of the CHS in action with the iPad, iPod touch or BlackBerry devices, please visit: http://ww1.socketmobile.com/products/bluetooth-scanners/how-to-buy/details.aspx?sku=CX2843-1160