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Will the iPad Revolutionize Healthcare?

 |  By cclark@healthleadersmedia.com  
   January 29, 2010

Apple's announcement of the iPad has been big news this week. The new technology has had health officials wondering: How will the iPad be used in a physician's practice, clinic or acute care setting? Could it really revolutionize care? Will it allow patients to communicate better with their providers through user-friendly pictures easily visible on the screen?

We asked health leaders to weigh in on the iPad, based on the rumor and the hype, and what is known about the device so far. Their consensus? Many things are possible, but maybe not just yet.


John David Halamka, MD
Chief information officer
Harvard Medical School
Emergency room physician
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

"Several folks have asked - will the iPad revolutionize healthcare?

"The answer is yes and no.

"My ideal clinical device is:

  • Less than a pound and fits in white coat pocket
  • Has a battery life of 8-12 hours (a full shift)
  • Can be dropped without major damage
  • Has a built-in full keyboard, voice recognition or very robust touch screen input
  • Provides a platform for a variety of healthcare applications hosted on the device or in the cloud"

"Netbooks and laptops are too heavy, too large, and do not meet my battery life requirements. The iPhone is too small for reliable data entry. The Kindle is a great device, but not a flexible application platform.

"The iPad comes closer to my requirements than other devices on the market.

"However, the ideal clinical device would include a camera for clinical photography and video teleconferencing. Entering data via the touch screen with gloved hands may be challenging on a capacitance touch screen. Holding the iPad with one hand means hunt and peck typing with the remaining hand.

"The device is a bit large for a white coat pocket, may be hard to disinfect, and may not be tolerant of dropping onto a hospital floor. I look forward to trying one to validate these assumptions. My general impression is that it is not perfect for healthcare, but it is closer than other devices I've tried so far.

"It will definitely be worth a pilot."

Kevin Pho, MD
Internal medicine specialist
Nashua, NH

"[The rollout has been] a lot of hype. But I think it holds tremendous promise in healthcare. People are focusing on how it looks. But the strength of it is in the software—the programming—and how easy it is to use.

"Apple has historically made their products easy to use. Now, it's up to software companies to write software programs that take advantage of how easy it is to use."

"The iPad could serve as a simple digital electronic medical record system that communicates easily with pharmacies and other medical record systems."


Brian Ahier
Health IT
Mid-Columbia Medical Center
The Dalles, OR

"I think it will eventually be used for medical clinical applications, just like the iPhone now is being adapted [by doctors and other healthcare providers] for clinical use.

"It's almost a generational shift. You have the older physicians who are resistant, and not as able to adapt to tablets and PDAs and point of care devices that allow access to clinical information or e-prescribing. They're just not as comfortable.

"But then there are the younger docs, and they come in excited that there's an app for getting PAC images, actually diagnostic images, and that's an exciting concept for the iPAD.

"Of course, for now, one is hard-pressed to find EHR vendors to have applications written for the Mac OS or for the glorified iPhone, that the iPad will be using. But you're going to see applications written for this iPad that we haven't even imagined yet. There will be some very serious clinical applications that physicians use everyday on their iPhones, but which five years ago no one would have imagined a doctor would use a phone for these purposes.

"And there are no USB ports on the iPad, which limit functionality. In the long-term, that won't be a barrier because everything will be wireless.


Tom Gehring
CEO
San Diego County Medical Society

"If you look at it as a tablet, we already have that [in products such as Lenovo's netbooks]. And if you look at it as an iPhone, we already have that.

"It's a little flashier, but it's just a big iTouch. It's not something revolutionary . . . unless people write cool apps for it. The lynch pin will be HIPAA compliant transmission."

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