AT ECR 2010 in Vienna, Austria, DOTmed News stopped by Barco's booth to check out their latest products.

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The Belgian makers of monitors and displays were debuting a brace of medical-grade PC tablets. (Barco proudly played up its Belgian heritage by offering Belgian chocolates during the show and even Belgian brews during the closing hours each day.) The tablets come courtesy of FIMI, formerly a subsidiary of Philips which Barco acquired late last year.

Pietro Regondi, business activity manager of FIMI, demonstrated to DOTmed News how to use one of the new tablets, called CliniScape, a device in the category called mobile clinical assistant, according to Regondi. "It's supposed to be the ideal device to take care of a patient in the hospital," he says. The interface of the tablet is with a digitizer pen, and to help prevent fatigue it's carried by a bar in the back that distributes the weight over the forearm. Fully-sealed, the tablet can be wiped down with alcohol and other common disinfectants, and its rugged design lets it sustain accidental drops or bashes.

A common drawback of clinical tablets is battery life -- usually they only last a few hours, well short of a doctor's or nurse's shift. Regondi says Barco's answer was swappable batteries. "It's not a hot swap, but what we call a warm swap," he says. The user freezes the computer, and then switches out the batteries (in a true hot swap, the computer would not need to be suspended or shut down for the battery switch).

The other tablet, called the ProScribe, is a so-called thin client device. That is, it doesn't actually host most software on its hard drive, but rather works through Internet connectivity to let medical staff pull down patients' information while making their rounds. "Nothing is resident" on the computer itself, Regondi says.

"Obviously, this requires huge wi-fi infrastructure," he admits. "It's possible in 30 to 40 percent of the hospitals in the world. The others need to upgrade their infrastructure to let this be possible."

Clinical displays

Also taking a bow at the show was a new clinical review display, the MDRC-1119, which boasts a 1 MegaPixel, 19-inch screen. Geert Carrein, market director for clinical and radiology displays at Barco, tells DOTmed News that these DICOM-calibrated clinical review displays are suited for doctor's offices, the ICU, surgery and laboratories. Barco developed the MDRC displays, which also include the 1119's bigger sister, the 2120, which has a 20-inch, 2 MegaPixel screen, because doctors outside of the radiology department have been asking for high-quality displays to review medical images.

"There's a very high interest for a display with better quality than is delivered standard with a computer," Carrein argues.