21/sup st/ century healthcare - The wireless panacea

Healthcare is an important industry that touches most, if not all of us. Healthcare is noted for using leading edge technologies and embracing new scientific discoveries to enable better cures for diseases and better means to enable early detection of most life threatening diseases. However, the healthcare industry globally, and in the US specifically, has been extremely slow to adopt technologies that focus on better practice management and administrative needs (Wickramasinghe and Mills 2001). In today's context of escalating costs in healthcare, managed care, regulations such as the Healthcare Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and a technology savvy patient, the healthcare industry can no longer be complacent regarding embracing technologies to enable better, more effective and efficient practice management. We believe such an environment is appropriate for the adoption of m-commerce or wireless solutions.