The business process reengineering was used to design the mCMA. This process started with analyzing the current work process and its difficulty shown in Fig. 18.1. Eight work items were identified and determined after close discussion with the head nurse and staffs as the core functions of the new solution: patient identification, medication administration reminding, medication checking, physician order checking, SOP guidelines, dosage automatic calculation, observation documentation and accident response. A prototype approach was used to design the interface so nurses could understand what the application would look like and how it would be used during their medication administration. IT engineers started to design the database and to code the application after the mCMA prototype model was approved by the NI specialist.

A handheld 6″ sterilizable Wifi Android Pad with barcode reader was chosen as the hardware [6]. A non-web-based Android native application was developed using the open source Eclipse development toolset by IT engineers. Medication barcodes were placed on all medication containers and used for identification checking compared to the ordered medication list shown on the screen of Pad after patient’s wristband barcode was scanned. An alert is issued whenever there is a mismatch between the data read by the barcode reader and the data read from hospital information system. Hospital care pathway guidelines for the accident prevention and response were included. All ten nurses from the unit were invited to evaluate the mCMA system. A 4-point Likert scale, in which 1 and 4 means completely disagree and completely agree respectively, questionnaire designed by the Technology Acceptance Model for Mobile Service model was used to evaluate nurses’ acceptance of the system.

Representative screen shots of the mCMA are shown in Figs. 18.3, 18.4, 18.5, 18.6, 18.7, 18.8 and 18.9. Nurse will see their patient list, Fig. 18.3, after log in. The application was designed based on nurses’ workflow, Fig. 18.4, starting from medication preparation (Fig. 18.5), administration preparation (Fig. 18.6) to bedside administration (Fig. 18.7). During preparation, application could assist nurse on drip rate calculation, Fig. 18.8, or check the guidelines, Fig. 18.9. Nurse could check physician’s order, Fig. 18.10. Nurse could documentation all necessary tasks such as biohazard waste disposal, Fig. 18.11. All tasks could be done in this single mobile solution.