Free PalmPilots to healthcare professionals

A new health care e-commerce site is establishing business by giving away PalmPilots to healthcare professionals. The ePhysician site enables healthcare professionals to order lab tests and prescriptions and can provide mobile access to patient information. With the ePhysician software loaded on a PalmPilot, the health provider can make the request, dock the PalmPilot to a PC and place the order. This process sends the order to ePhysician, which then sends it to laboratories and pharmacies either electronically or via fax. To encourage use, ePhysician will give away 10,000 free PalmPilots to healthcare professionals who register at the site. The company claims that this system will increase the quality of care since studies have shown that instances of adverse drug reactions decrease significantly when drugs are prescribed electronically. Initially, the ePhysician software will work only with the PalmOS, but the vendor says subsequent versions will work with the wireless Palm VII and with Windows CE devices.