The prototype versions of our application showed poor performance when loading the panels. All fields, labels, colors, sizes, fonts, and other attributes are stored in the SQL CE database. Screen load times were in excess of 30 to 45 seconds. Our best efforts resulted in little improvement until the release of Windows Mobile 2003.
We purchased an HP 2210 which had Windows Mobile 2003, installed our application with a sample database, and found a leap in performance. Panel load times were reduced by 80–90%. With performance concerns aside, we performed several simple workflow tests and found only a few screen-refresh issues with the new operating system, which were resolved within one day.
Quality control
Without the luxury of automated wells, data quality becomes the responsibility of each person who has contact with the system. The best place to ensure quality information is its first point of entry. Thereafter, independent review should provide a final check before information becomes part of the permanent store and is used for accounting and revenue recognition. When field operators collect information that is used to pay royalties and joint-interest partners, the chances are high that financial liability could result from bad data.
Simple validation rules such as minimum and maximum values provide the first line of defense against invalid data. However, there may be instances where regularly scheduled maintenance causes a violation of the preset minimum and maximum values. In these cases the user should be able to receive a warning message and continue to save the information. The administrator may determine which data fields’ min/max rules yield a warning or error message.
A second defense requires more complicated rules and calculations. For example, one may wish to calculate oil or gas production from a set of user-entered data elements and compare it to the average of the previous seven days. If the result falls outside of a tolerable percentage, the data entered may be invalid. It may be correct, but a larger mechanical issue may be evident.
Unlike desktop PC manufacturers, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) of Pocket PCs receive the Windows Mobile 2003 operating system and then add a layer of their own code prior to product release. During our planning phase, we discovered that this affects the performance and behavior of our application. We benchmarked the HP iPAQ 3900 and 5400 and later the 2210 series devices, along with Dell’s Axim line. Although they all performed adequately, we reduced our risk by testing the product and optimizing quality and performance on HP iPAQ 3900, 2210, and 5400 series devices. Our application will perform adequately on any Windows Mobile 2003 device, but we recommend the HP iPAQ product line for optimum performance.
First-line surveillance
Historically, field operators provide a source of data and ensure that the wells remain operational and environmentally safe. Amid recent advances in mobile technology and wireless communications, their role may be extended to serve as the eyes and ears of production engineers working thousands of miles away. With valuable summary grid views and validations at his or her fingertips, the operator becomes the first person to find potentially negative trends and identify areas where mechanical or even reservoir concerns require further attention.
Determining a negative trend requires historical information. SQL Server CE may serve as the local data store and enable the availability of history up to the memory limits of the device. Secure Digital memory cards are inexpensive and can store years of history. We recommend a minimum of 256 MB for 30–120 days of history.
An operator’s daily routine usually includes driving a predefined route and making multiple stops at different well sites. With the availability of history, production operations professionals may adjust their daily activities and proactively manage wells and associated equipment. Although many good software packages exist for preventive maintenance, Handheld Field Operator provides a means to prevent lost production.
Communications
The ability to share information in near-real time becomes crucial for the immediate resolution of potential well problems and to prevent lost oil or gas production. Wireless technologies are a means not only to communicate verbally, but to provide the associated data and comments that the production engineer may use to perform dynamic surveillance and to review workover histories at his desk.
Advances in wireless networking and cellular technology provide a means to communicate verbally and to provide important data in near-real time. Expansions of cellular networks to remote locations and T-Mobile Hotspots are beginning to provide the level of infrastructure needed for industrial application. Many offshore operations and international locations utilize satellite technology as well.
Although wireless technology provides the most efficient means of communications, many remote locations struggle to gain access to quality phone lines. As such, we must consider the lowest common denominator, a 14.4 baud modem, when enabling connectivity through a secure Internet link. We are able to convert the new data to small XML packets with an average size of 200 KB and transmit them through any means to the main database. From cradle to modem to satellite, data may be quickly shared with an asset team across the world.
Individual Pocket PC devices contain their own security, so we were mainly concerned with preventing false data from entering the system during communications with the engineering database. We chose to provide synchronization through Microsoft VPN, an IIS virtual server, and an HTTPS Internet connection. The administrator sets the user’s login information, and user authentication is performed each time the synchronization is processed. Significant investigation and development work is necessary to continually improve the security of the environment; this technology provided a baseline system.
Wireless technology is used to improve the communication of well information; wireless instant messaging and e-mail services improve regular communications as well. The field operator or production engineer may be at lunch or busy with other operations and receive an actionable alert message.
(above) Fig. 4. Execute Send/Receive with a set of options
Cost of ownership
From the perspective of information technology departments, replacing field data-capture laptops with Pocket PC devices provides significant savings in the areas of:
application patches and upgrades
inexpensive disposable hardware
information portability.
With the use of .NET CF technology, the need for expensive hands-on upgrades is eliminated. When the field operator synchronizes daily information, the system searches for the presence of a .CAB file in a special directory. If the file exists, it is transferred to the Pocket PC. Upon the next application launch, the file is found and a quick database and application upgrade is performed. The end user may not even notice that the application has changed.
This process is valuable for major upgrades, saving companies thousands of dollars per user. As mentioned earlier, each operator is assigned a specific route. Often, route assignments or associated wells are modified. During the regular, inevitable product patch cycles and route maintenance, the ability to manage a device remotely is important. These changes are made available to the operators when they synchronize.
Windows Mobile Pocket PC devices are relatively inexpensive compared to laptops or even Tablet PCs. Transitioning to smaller, cheaper wireless devices translates to real hardware savings. The rugged environmental conditions and treatment of hardware leads to high turnover in equipment. Pocket PC devices become disposable as the field data capture application and its local database are stored on the Secure Digital memory card. With spare devices readily available, field operators may switch out devices without losing a beat.
Hopefully, our experience with these five challenges will provide ideas to improve your product lines. The development of Landmark’s Handheld Field Operator Pocket PC application continues to be challenging and educational for the company and our development team. With much caffeine, long hours, and a bit of luck, we managed to release a solid product on time
and within budget.
* * *
Paul Hamel is the Product Manager for Handheld Field Operator and Dynamic Surveillance System (DSS) for the Landmark Division of Halliburton Energy Services. With a passion for improving the user’s experience, Paul continues to extend mobility to the oil and gas industry. Paul may be reached at [email protected]
Microsoft in Healthcare
Interview with Bill Keay of Microsoft’s Healthcare group
by Ed Zabrek, M.D.
Bill Keay leads Microsoft’s mobility efforts in healthcare as a member of its Healthcare group. Microsoft has been committed to improving healthcare worldwide since 1997, when it formed this team to help the healthcare industry and its partners realize its potential for improving productivity, safety, and quality through proven innovations in integration, greater value, and reduced complexity.
Why is Microsoft interested in healthcare?
Today, healthcare is facing some very big challenges to reduce costs, increase operational efficiencies, and improve overall quality of care. Healthcare costs are increasing more than 12% to 15% a year and are threatening to consume 20% of our GNP in the next five years. We believe that many of these business challenges can be addressed through better access to resources—specifically, informational resources.
What can Microsoft do to help improve healthcare?
One way to reduce costs in healthcare is to improve the level of automation and integration within today’s healthcare systems. For example, the average hospital runs more than 150 distinct systems, of which very few are capable of working together to share key information necessary for improved patient care and better operational efficiency. Add to this the need to communicate claim information on a patient with the outside systems from insurance organizations and the issues are compounded. Microsoft, in conjunction with our healthcare partners, believes that by leveraging the data within these systems to be exposed as a non-proprietary format (i.e., XML), both the people who deliver healthcare and those who receive it will gain access to any information, at any time, and on any smart device, thus leading to a dramatic increase in the quality of healthcare.
What other areas of healthcare do you see where Microsoft could drive improvements?
Beyond the ability to integrate disparate system information, the ability to reduce the reliance on paper-based forms offers the single biggest area for improvement in healthcare. Approximately 70% of healthcare transactions today are paper-based, resulting in high administrative costs and difficulty accessing critical patient information at the time of care. In addition to the costs of manually filling out and storing all this paperwork, the process is prone to errors. Automating the process using electronic forms offers a number of advantages: Pre-populated forms are faster to complete, saving time for caregivers to see a greater number of patients; limited data entry fields on e-forms yield higher quality information; personnel normally on staff who transcribe this information into an organization’s system(s) can be eliminated or redirected. Some healthcare industry analysts believe the $90 billion the healthcare industry currently spends in administrative costs could be slashed to $5 billion or less by moving from paper-based systems.
How do you see the Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Smartphone platforms driving improvements in these areas of healthcare?
Healthcare can’t afford to take place in front of desktop computers. Healthcare workers today need access to information at the point of care. These individuals need smart, handheld devices that can access information from any number of sources—Internet Web sites, XML data from internal applications, applications on the device, etc. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platforms not only leverage the ability to integrate with desktop messaging and PIM information over wireless and wired connections, but our platforms are smart devices that are able to consume XML data, along with other sources of information, to provide critical information to caregivers or information workers when they need it. Mobile devices are playing a critical role in the improvements in healthcare today.
Can you share with us where these platforms have driven significant improvements in healthcare?
There are many success stories, but two come to mind. The first would be Temple University Health System where Dr. Eric Mankin, Chief Medical Officer, leveraged the power of the Windows Mobile Pocket PC device to significantly slow the rise of what had been a 20% annual increase in their pharmacy budget. The mobile platform allowed them to shift their physicians’ generic drug utilization from 38% to 50% by providing health-plan prescription information at the time of care, saving pharmacy calls, authorization issues, and angry patients who are bearing an ever-increasing share of the cost of their drugs. In addition to saving millions in their pharmacy operations, Dr. Mankin utilized the improved patient care to negotiate a 10% reduction in Temple’s malpractice premium.
The second example is how the Windows Mobile platform helped Aventis, a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, drive significant business value. For every prescription sample that is left with a physician for his patients as part of the sales process, the FDA requires a signature. In the past this was accomplished by paper-based forms that presented similar challenges as I described earlier. Aventis developed an application for the Pocket PC, using two developers and the Visual Studio toolset, in only 4 weeks—half to a third of the time and resources other platforms would normally take. With their sales representatives enabled with Pocket PCs, a complete inventory of samples and physicians’ signatures were captured electronically during the course of the day. This process improved sales representative productivity by over 160,000 more sales calls per year, but also resulted in a projected savings of $5 million in the first year.
What is compelling physicians to adopt Windows Mobile devices?
Physicians are sometimes viewed as slow to use technology, but the fact of the matter is that physicians are pragmatic scientists. If the technology works—if it saves them time, helps them do their jobs better—they will quickly use it. Forrester Research has recently reported that the number of physicians using handheld devices has doubled over the past four years. Physicians are adopting mobile devices such as the Pocket PC as a tool to help them practice better medicine, and better medicine means improved patient care.
What improvements do you see in store for Windows Mobile devices that will benefit healthcare?
As Moore’s law still continues to persist in the advancement of handheld computational power and functionality, I believe we will reach a point very shortly where on-board speech recognition and speech-to-text will drive some dramatic uses of these devices in healthcare. n
A Priceless Portable Medical Library
Skyscape’s ARTbeat
by Ed Zabrek, M.D.
In the past, I have written about medical reference software for PDAs and other mobile devices, from companies such as Skyscape, ePocrates, and Thomson (Mobile PDR). The comprehensive list of integrated medical titles from Skyscape, while not the least expensive of the group, has been my favorite. These programs are essential to my practice, and they assist doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals with portable information at our fingertips. They eliminate the need to lug around a stack of heavy books; however, as with textbooks, the information is not always up to date.
With the increasing pace of the discovery of new treatments, of approvals of new drugs, of new warnings of drug interactions, and of recalls by the FDA (5,025 products in 2002), it is essential that the information which we use to treat and manage patients not be static. The Pocket PC is a good solution for that, but today, content is primarily the domain of medical school reference books.
Daily, I am inundated with medical information from disparate sources such as the Web, journals and newsletters, as well as peer-reviewed content, drug notifications, and FDA or CDC alerts. This typically comes in the form of paper newsletters which are piled up on my desk, or Web stories that are hard to keep straight.
Information at my fingertips
Having access to this current information is more important than many doctors and other healthcare practitioners realize. Research has shown that the ability to capture and retrieve accurate information at the point of care can decrease the time it takes for delivering care by half and can significantly reduce prescription and other errors. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has noted that insufficient or erroneous point-of-care treatment information is a frequent and significant cause of medical errors. Preventable in-patient drug mistakes alone cost the American economy more than $2 billion and 80,000 lives annually!
How does it work?
Skyscape’s ARTbeat platform is excellent in its simplicity. Once downloaded to the Pocket PC, it updates new information (through ActiveSync), keeping me as current as my last sync. (Note: users must have a live Internet connection to keep updated.) Furthermore, Skyscape provides smARTlink, which automatically cross-indexes information from a variety of independent sources and topics.
Pocket PC magazine, Apr/May 2004 Page 17