Motion Computing, a leader in mobile computing and wireless communications, today announced that one year after its initial launch, the C5 mobile clinical assistant (MCA) is proving to change the way patient care is delivered. The success of the industry's first mobile clinical assistant is clear this year at HIMSS, where the device will be featured by more than 50 vendors across the show floor.

"The C5 was developed by Motion and Intel to address many of the issues that are facing healthcare organizations today," said Scott Eckert, CEO of Motion. "The most positive result is that we are enabling caregivers to provide better patient care by impacting such critical areas as improving point of care documentation, enhancing nursing satisfaction and providing immediate access to information to help clinicians prevent medication issues, like medication administration errors."

The features of the C5 help caregivers improve the delivery of patient care. Clinicians can use the integrated bar code reader and RFID scanner to positively identify patients and manage medication administration. Additionally, the durable, sealed design enables simple cleaning and disinfection. Results from a series of usability studies conducted by Motion, Intel, hospital clients and leading software providers prove that the C5 can positively impact some issues facing healthcare professionals today. Some recent results include:

-- 42 percent improvement in point of care (POC) documentation

-- 80 percent reduction in data that needed manual transcription, reducing the potential for human error

-- Identification of 15 of 1853 "near misses" at the point of medication administration

-- Decreased transcription error rate from 25 percent to 7 percent due to increased POC documentation

"To this graying, 30 year veteran of the HIT wars, whose education and initial experience with HIT was to evaluate and justify clinical IT based on its value as a productivity enhancer and tool for process and quality improvement, the results of first six of these studies are impressive, indeed," commented Marc Holland, Program Director of Health Provider Research for Health Industry Insights, in a recent issue of the Health Insights & Outlooks newsletter.

Holland continued, "Based on the results of these field studies, C5-enabled care processes were deemed to be cheaper, quicker, more efficient and led to better outcomes and higher user satisfaction ratings than computers on wheels (COWS)."