...we went and talked with doctors and nurses at hospitals and conducted focus groups. Then we came up with something and had them look at it... Is it too big? Is the bar code scanner in the right place? Then they'll ask questions like, "What if I lose it?"
We have a new version that has an integrated keyboard that has nine or 12 symbols that medical professionals understand. We're tweaking form factors, doing things like that. The people who are going to use it are going to be an active part of designing it.
Once we get it figured out pretty good, we will build a reference design and let the industry go at it.
How far away before the product hits the market — two, three years?
It won't be that far out.
The prototypes you are showing look pretty small. Are they based around a regular Intel chip or an XScale?
You could do something with a Yonah or a Merom [two upcoming notebook chips]. You want that horsepower and that capability. People want something small. But they have done some experiments with PDAs, and PDAs are too small. You don't want to just input data. It's not like UPS forms.
They also want things like voice recognition. Let's say you're a doctor and you've written an order, and a nurse captures it (on a tablet) and then says, "Dr. Kanellos, can you approve that order?" Or let's say I walk into your room, it picks up your RFID bracelet, and I get a good understanding of what is going on.
We all know the health care system in America can drive people nuts. How is it in the rest of the world?
We were at a Pacific Health Summit in Seattle that Lee Hartwell [Nobel laureate and president of the Fred Hutchinson Institute] organised. The phrase that came out of that was that talking about the US health care system is like talking about my [hypothetical] brother. "I know he's a jerk, and I know I have to deal with him, but when you talk bad about him I am going to defend him." That is what you see in the US health care system.
Is one better than the other? I don't know. The [British] NHS is a very a cool system in some respects. But for some reason, there is a second system that is developing in the UK where you can take out private insurance and pay to get to see the doctor sooner.
