UPMC, Seattle Children's Choose Surface Pro 3

By Karla Paris

Healthcare facilities manage electronic medical records using the new tablet technology.

Seattle Children's Hospital announced its facilities are replacing existing laptops with Surface Pro 3 deployments. The hospital plans to leverage its touch-friendly interface to manage electronic medical records while complying with all regulations, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Ranked as one of the nation’s best children’s hospitals by U.S. News & World Report , Seattle Children’s Hospital delivers superior patient care, advanced new discoveries and treatments through pediatric research, and serves as the pediatric and adolescent academic medical referral center for Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho – the largest region of any children’s hospital in the country.

At Seattle Children’s Hospital, officials said Surface Pro 3 will be the laptop replacement for doctors and officials for a number of reasons. Among them: the Surface Pro 3 pen provides the ability to take notes on the device’s 12-inch screen giving physicians the functionality of a PC in the form of a light-weight, easy-to-handle device.

UPMC, a healthcare delivery and financing system in Pittsburgh, PA announced it too had chosen to deploy nearly 2,000 Surface Pro 3 tablets over Microsoft’s rival, Apple iPad. UPMC launched a pilot program with its heart doctors at Presbyterian Hospital, giving them Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablets to use for their daily activities. The program went so well, UPMC has now advanced to a full deployment rolling out the nearly 2,000 devices system-wide.

UPMC believes that the technology solution will allow its physicians to utilize Microsoft Surface Pro 3 devices to access patient information on their Convergence application. The Convergence software application was developed at UPMC’s Technology Development Center in collaboration with Caradigm, Intel, and Microsoft.

Amongst various Windows tablet options making the claim of being truly clinical-grade devices, allowing health professionals to have instant and highly secure mobile access to patient information in the varying situations they work in, Seattle Children’s Hospital and UPMC made their decision on which tablet they want for their healthcare professionals.