After successful trials at one of the North West’s best performing hospitals, an Intel and Motion Computing designed electronic clipboard has been unveiled, writes Daniel Griffin.

The portable device, known as a mobile clinical assistant (MCA) is the fusion of a tablet PC with traditional clipboard, but is also packed full of useful features for medical professionals including a barcode reader to scan for medicine labels, patient records, and wrist bands and a radio frequency identification scanner (RFID), to track and ensure secure login of staff. The unit also houses a digital camera to take images of wounds and connect and upload all this information back to a central database.

Its greatest strength is that medical practitioners will be able to call up patient records, order and receive test results, as well as making notes – all in real time.

Commenting on the healthcare hardware, Dr Mike Bainbridge, a senior clinical architect for the NHS has hailed it as “one of the most exciting developments in my 25 years in medicine.” Although there is no official confirmation, timeframe or further details, the BBC reported that Dr Bainbridge hinted the NHS may well be placing an order for the devices. At £1,199 per unit they are not cheap, although as the NHS is currently engaging in a £12bn IT infrastructure implementation that price seems like a drop in the ocean.

There are however a number of issues that will need to be addressed, first of all, for the MCS to be truly effective it will need to be used in a hospital with a Wifi network so that each device can communicate with the hospitals central database and various departments. Secondly there is real concern from GP’s about patient confidentiality being at risk if their records are put on an NHS national database, with over half who took part in a Guardian survey last year saying they would consider refusing to upload patient information at the moment.