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Issue #23-7.3.07
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Remote Access: You Can Take It With You
As dentists, we find that our professional lives are often very busy. We travel to trade shows, take CE courses, and take time off on weekends and holidays to be with family and friends. However, we also want to be available to our patients after hours for emergencies, and in most cases, have access to their data. Sure, you can always drive over to the office if it’s a few block away, but in this modern world, there are alternatives that may make more sense for accessing our data when we’re not in the office:
- Personal Digital Assistants. PDAs and Smartphones are very popular in our society. Recognizing this, most of the better dental practice management programs offer a module to allow the practice to take information home with them. This is the ideal situation for offices that don’t have high speed Internet at home and just need the basic information. There are, however, a few limitations. The practice management programs will integrate with either a Pocket PC or a Palm, but not both. Meaning, if you already use one of these and your software doesn’t support it, you’ll need to buy another one. Also, due to the much smaller memory capacity of these devices, the amount of information you can bring with you is often minimal. It may be limited to just that day’s callbacks, or a few days of your schedule. It won’t have a list of all patients, for example, with medical history and progress notes.
- If you have high speed Internet access at home, then there are a number of software options available. While you certainly can use dial-up, the graphic nature of practice management software would make this process painfully slow.
- The one that most people are familiar with is PC Anywhere. While this program has been around a long time, it’s not one of my favorites as it only allows you to access one computer at the office and I find it a bit clunky to use. The software costs about $200 but one of the main advantages is that you can transfer files from one location to the other.
- An easier option is to consider a web-based system, such as LogMeIn.com. There is a free version that allows remote access, or a paid version ($199/year) for the ability to transfer files. The beauty of this system is the ease-of-use to set it up: you don’t need to know anything about firewalls or port forwarding to use this system.
- Another good option is Remote Desktop. If you use Windows XP Professional at the office (It doesn’t work with XP Home as the “host” computer), then you can log into the system with this built-in software. This is a true remote desktop situation; you work on the remote or host computer as if you were right in front of it, and can use the mouse and keyboard normally. Since the software comes with XP (the client software is on all versions of XP and will work on any version of Windows if you download it from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/tools/rdclientdl.mspx), you can’t beat the price. The main downside is that when you connect, it blanks out the screen of the person who is using the computer at that location. So you can’t, for example, use Remote Desktop and have the local user watch what you are doing. This is not an issue for after hours remote access, of course.
- VNC is another excellent program for remote access. Some versions are free, but the ones with better security and passwords are not. There are many variations of VNC…I like RealVNC.
- To use most of the above programs, you’ll need two things: an open port on your router, and a fixed Internet address (called the IP address) for the office computer. You can pay extra to get a static IP address, but you don’t need to. You’re better off with a dynamic IP address and then get a free service, such as No-IP which allows you to associate a name you choose with the IP address.
Through use of PDAs and remote access, dentists can easily have access to critical information that they may need after the office is closed.
Lorne Lavine, DMD is the Founder and President of Dental Technology Consultants. Dr. Lavine holds two prestigious certifications, the A+ Certified Technician designation and the Network+ Certified Professional. These designations demonstrate proficiency in computer repair, operating systems, network design and installation. Dental Technology Consultants provide dentists a full range of services relating to the implementation of technology.
Dr. Lavine can be reached directly at 1.866.204.3398.
Interested in speaking to Dr. Lavine about your technology concerns? Email him at Drlavine@thedentistsnetwork.net
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