Healthcare is not a typical 9-5 industry. This is readily apparent as soon as one walks into a hospital. The emergency room in most hospitals, especially, can be a chaotic place, and a far cry from the quiet bustle of most business offices.
Emergency medical services, or EMS, is also an example of healthcare’s unique setting. The paramedics who work in EMS are among the first responders to arrive at any scene involving ill or injured people. The ambulance vehicle is their office, as well as a temporary ER and hospital for their patients while it barrels through the streets to the real deal.
EMS equipment like computers have to handle this sometimes very harrowing experience. Rugged medical tablets are built to do so, click here to learn more. Here are a few of the more notable design choices.
Industrial Grade Components
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, but ambulance service vehicles are not like the typical quiet office cubicle or workstation. They’re cramped, stuffed with storage units and equipment, and have lots of hard surfaces and corners. And the entire is moving as the vehicle heads to a scene and then to the hospital.
Typical off-the-shelf tablets will quickly get roughed up in the above conditions. Rugged medical tablets, on the other hand, will do just fine thanks to their industrial grade components. These include not only the materials used in the tablet but how they are designed as well.
Solid state drive (SSD) is an example of this. A cooling fanless design is another. Neither component has moving parts which can stop or break to render the entire computer useless until repaired or replaced. Rugged medical tablets undergo many tests like shock treatments to being dropped onto hard surfaces to ensure they’ll work under all kinds of conditions.
Rated IP65
Paramedics handle blood, bodily fluids, and other unpleasant things during the course of their work. It’s important, then, that those substances don’t affect their equipment.
That’s why rugged medical tablets have been sealed with an rating of IP65. This means the casing, panels, and front bezel protect the interior from entry of dust and liquid, all of which could potentially damage or even destroy the electronics housed there. This also makes them easier to clean since the harsh cleaning agents and liquids used can’t get in them.
Antimicrobial
Coating the tablet’s plastic housing or baked into it, antibacterial protects against deterioration and degradation from microbes.
Connectivity
Paramedics need to be in constant touch with other first responders like firefighters as well as emergency medical staff. They cannot afford to lose connectivity as lives are at stake. Rugged medical tablets equipped with 4G LTE internet access allow them to receive and transmit vital patient information enroute to ER. The solid wi-fi connection can also help them perform better on-site treatment thanks to access to patient’s electronic medical records for important info like allergies or drug problems.
Battery Life
People fall ill, get sick, injured, or all three at once at all hours of the day and night. EMS does not have the luxury to wait for portable electronics to finish charging their batteries, which can take hours.
Hot swappable batteries take care of this problem. Rugged medical tablets with this feature can have any of their spent batteries taken out while the tablet is still running. The paramedic then pops in fresh ones while putting the spent batteries to recharge in the external charging dock station.
Up to six batteries can be held in the station. This makes the tablet’s downtown virtually zero as drained batteries are swapped back and forth with freshly charged ones.
The healthcare sector has many aspects that separate it from most 9-5 businesses. Emergency medical services is one example, with its paramedics and ambulances constantly out and about 24/7 to handle emergencies. Rugged medical computers are built and designed to work in this tough environment.
