By Healthcare Facilities Today

The personal computer has done a lot of good for clinicians in hospital settings, but it may be time for them to check out, according to an article on the Health Leaders Media web site. 

According to the article, while PCs powered electronic medical records in a way that previous computing had barely dented, their day has passed. As aged PCs get refreshed, they are being moved out for "zero-client" terminals that IT organizations simply plug in. They are quieter, safer, and cheaper to buy and to maintain.

Zero clients have no hard disks and usually run a small kernel of Linux software in flash memory and requires almost no updating. With no spinning hard disks, cooling requirements are minimal, so the hardware is longer-lasting and quieter.

Virtualization technology, coupled with proximity technology that senses a user's name badge not unlike modern door access systems, allows a user's desktop to follow him or her around a facility while requiring the user to enter a user ID and password only once during a shift, according to the article.

A recent survey found for the first time that a majority of hospitals are using thin or zero clients instead of traditional PC clients. That same survey found that two years from now, 98 percent of those surveyed will be using thin or zero client as part of their IT strategy.

Virtualization is an idea almost as old as computing itself, having been popularized by IBM on its 360 mainframe in the 1960s. Even running virtualization on a PC is not novel anymore. But the move toward a totally virtualized desktop as a mass phenomenon, particularly in healthcare, is just beginning

Read the article.