Need advice for large scale PDA Rollout

[bob1barker]

I work for a healthcare company that is looking to deploy PDA's to all our facilities for the use of electronic charting. All nurses will carry these devices around and chart their patients information so the facilities have them in real time. Currently we are using the HP 2490b's and I was wondering if there were any alternatives. What we are finding is althought the majority of the time they are using the devices they are just touching the screen with there fingers as it asks them questions about the care, they do have to log into the application when they first check out the device and people are struggling with the keyboard size. We are also wondering if there are any other devices running the windows OS that have larger screens. THe devices will need built in wireless but that is about it. We use MobiControl to lock the devices down and only use this one application on the devices.

any thoughts on devices with larger screens?

[phmurphy]

HP has a new 4" screen that will be out soon.

[palewar]

I think you should instead try to get your software interface modified to suit tapping by fingers instead of a stylus. There are some software which follow this approach. TomTom navigator is a good example. Also the default phone application on windows mobile phones has large keys.

Also I will suggest you should use some Symbol PDA which are meant for industrial use. MC35 (http://www.symbol.com/mc35) may be a good device for your requirements.

Other changes can also be done in your software like giving user lists and drop downs for common things so that he is not required to enter them again and again. Also interface can be designed in such a way that all the operations can be performed even without touching the screen. That's called one-handed navigation approach.

Hope this helps :-)
For more info you can contact me via my website or blog.