The MDeverywhere software sits between the clinic's or hospital's existing practice management system and the physicians' PDAs, mediating and managing the communication between them over secure Internet connections. MDeverywhere can integrate with virtually any practice management system using standardized integration tools or custom integration.

Scheduling information and the patient records associated with a clinician's schedule or hospital rounds move from practice management system to PDA. When a physician starts rounds, they'll only have to look at the PDA screen to know who they'll be seeing.

Doctors use forms-based client applications on the PDAs to record everything during the interaction with the patient, to take notes and place orders for prescriptions, tests and diagnostics. That information passes from the PDA to practice management system during synching sessions.

"Users can run synchronizations as frequently as they need," Pollard explains. "Some run a couple of times a day, others every five minutes."

MDeverywhere has claimed returns on investment of as much as 300 percent per year. When it's easy and convenient for docs to record all the charges against a patient's record, and they're continually prompted to do so, they actually do it. Result: clinics capture more charges and therefore more revenue from patients and insurance companies.

Because the physician is recording charges with an easy-to-use forms-based application, there is no need for support staff to transcribe often messy -- and incomplete -- notes. This saves support staff time and it also ensures higher accuracy, which results in fewer denials of charges by insurance companies.

"It works just fine without wireless," Pollard notes. "But it's easier in some important ways with wireless."

For starters, wireless will make it easier to deploy and easier for doctors to use. Institutions won't have to disrupt clinical areas to deploy wired networks. They also won't have to try and shoe-horn PCs into cramped clinical spaces. With wireless, PCs are bypassed and the PDAs synch directly with MDeverywhere servers -- without physicians having to do anything

"It's also a benefit in certain work flows -- in walk-in clinics, for example, where if a patient comes into the clinic [without an appointment], they won't be on the physician's handheld. This allows us to get that patient on to the device immediately."