>>Thanks to all for your tips and advice.
>
>Let me know what your solution is. I am a member of a Netware Users Group, and our past president is an IS mgr at a hospital. I can pick his brain if you would like.

No solution yet.

The main issue is letting the doctors use the data. The second issue is that we are only one unit (dept) in a hospital and we can't count on other units having computers or live ethernet ports. This despite almost the entire campus and most of the building being having a backbone ethernet network.

It seems that the doctors must either have a wireless connection or take a subset of the data then easily synchronize it when they get back. If they had to search for a computer on a ward, login in, start our app, this would take too much time. Or if the synrhonization process was too technical for them they wouldn't do it. Cell modems are also problematic with medical equipment and in fact cell phones have been banned inside hospital buildings.

Really they want to bring up a patient record, the check off the ward the patient is on, the diagnosis code, and a few other fields.

So... so far no keeper ideas. The most workable solution is to have a Windows CE device or laptop with some data screens that can synchronize with the main db. I am still looking for ideas though.