FAQ: Tablets and THOMAS

Many of you have been asking about using THOMAS with a tablet and the answer depends upon the THOMAS product you are using, your networking and wireless set up, and your patience.
First off, no matter what THOMAS product you are using, you would need to be using Microsoft Server, with a Terminal Server and terminal services, (and good wireless).  Both eTHOMAS and ehrTHOMAS are not natively housed on each computer.  You connect to your server and are using your server as the brains and brawn.  The computer or tablet you are using to input data basically becomes a “terminal” to access and use the product on the server.

Before you finish raising your hand, let me say (for those of you who might use remote desktop to access one computer from another) – technically yes, you could use a remote (like “remote control”) to access and use the program on another computer, but those of you have done it with a regular computer know that both the computer you are using and the computer you are accessing are not available for anyone else to use or access. Both computers are tied up. It also tends to be very slow and gitchy – even with a regular computer.  This is usually not a preferred solution and is generally only even suggested by us if you have to connect to another location’s computer (like when we connect with you for support).  Odds are if you are using more than 3 computers in your office our hardware specialists talked to you quite diligently about terminal services.  If you are using any kind of wireless access in your office – I know they did for sure.

So now what? Now we talk about products:

ehrTHOMAS was designed for touch screen and is designed, from the beginning to be finger friendly.  The size of the screens and buttons in the program are designed for you to use with a tablet.  So yes, if you want to use tablets with your ehrTHOMAS system, contact support and they will help you evaluate your current hardware and networking and let you know what you need to do to set up ehrTHOMAS to use your tablets (as well as any hardware, tablet, and software recommendations they might have).

We’ve been getting asked more and more often lately if there is an eTHOMAS app or if eTHOMAS and be readily used on a tablet device.  eTHOMAS, our practice management system, in its current design, is NOT designed for tablet (i.e. iPad, Galaxy, Kindle, etc.) use.  Can it be done? We don’t recommend it as the current buttons, controls, screens, fonts, and reports were all designed for desktop use.  That being said it is possible to lump through many of the screens, and in a pinch you might have to do this from somewhere if all you have is your tablet and you are the doctor checking on some patient information.  But there are areas that will probably not work right and things you won’t be able to see and access properly, etc.  It doesn’t work well.  You would have to be using remote desktop and explained above, and it can be slow, choppy, and hard to read and use.  We can give you are best hardware advice on it, but we will not recommend eTHOMAS to tablet for now.

Will eTHOMAS ever be tablet friendly?  In its next major version, I would pretty much bet on it.  If you have not had a chance to see or experience our ehrTHOMAS program, I would highly recommend that you schedule a demo.  That is the future of THOMAS and where even our beloved eTHOMAS program will be going as we evolve our programs for both industry and government standards and to make those standards easy for your office to use and grow with.

If you have want to add new equipment, upgrade old equipment, etc. always feel that you can call and talk with our hardware support specialists.  We care.  We’ll make sure that you get what you need to help your office run great and let you be the genius!