Miranda Manganaro, Healthcare Analyst
Hi and welcome to the Manhattan Research eHealth Trends podcast! My name is Miranda Manganaro and today we will be discussing my new shiny toy – the iPad – and its implications for the physician marketplace. By its third week on the market, Apple has announced it has sold over 500,000 of the touch screen devices despite the release of its 3G version available at the end of this month. Steve Jobs has placed the iPad somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop computer on the mobile device hierarchy, and with many US physicians owning an Apple mobile device in 2010, namely the iPhone or the iPod Touch, expectations and predictions for how physicians will embrace the iPad are running rampant all over Internet.
Upon originally opening the iPad my initial reaction was that this would be phenomenal for physicians to carry around their practice or hospital, figuring it could easily replace messy clipboards and charts. A review of the iPad on iMedicalApps.com by Iltifat Husain provides some interesting insight into a physician’s initial take on the device. He mentions that the iPad, while hefty feeling in your hands is very thin and can easily be ported around in the front pocket of a physician’s white coat. For physicians in a clinical setting this is extremely important – while some may make the argument that the iPad doesn’t sport the computing power a tradition laptop might have, it’s size, enhanced applications, and battery life make it a practical addition to HIT point of care usability. Not to mention once software developers begin to write more extensive iPad enhanced applications the potential for practice record keeping is incredibly promising.
Dr. Carlos M. Nunez makes an interesting point in his post on the iPad’s relationship to HIT on Healthcare-Exchange.com. He mentions that, physicians need to “embrace the idea that mobile computing works best when workflow and technology are aligned,” he argues this in response to the complaint that a powerful desktop operating system is lacking from the device. Dr. Nunez goes on to state that due to the technological shift of HIT vendors to “Web-native platforms” from “OS-centric platforms” the idea of a highly responsive web-browsing device makes sense for physicians at the point of care. As far as eMR is concerned however, it very well may be awhile before we see many major players in the industry utilizing the iPad, as allegiances to the Windows operating system held by many major eMR manufacturers could hamper this. Should these vendors write web or application based programs for a tablet, we can only speculate if they will be writing for the iPad or a competing Windows-based device.
Dr. Joseph Kim offers some iPad applications from a practice profile point of view on MedPageToday’s KevinMD.com. Dr. Kim suggests patient utilization of an “inter-office” iPad to retrieve PHR information, schedule appointments, entertain rowdy children in the waiting room, and even as an exam tool – just to name a few.
From my own personal use, another intriguing characteristic of the iPad for physician use is the beauty with which it displays full-version websites. The lightning fast processing speed of the device makes the iPad an interesting player in point of care patient education as websites such as Epocrates pull up quickly and in their full version, just as they would on a desktop or laptop computer. As healthcare vendors begin to write more iPad enhanced applications we will truly start to see a more complex set of uses for the device. As mentioned in Manhattan Research’s Taking the Pulse® v10.0 study, a significant share of online physicians are accessing the Internet during patient consultations, the majority of those physicians using a handheld device. The possibilities the iPad holds for use during patient consultations are seemingly infinite. With the iPad’s impressive display, point of care patient education has potential to be extremely interactive.
Only time will tell how implementation of the iPad in the clinical setting will influence the HIT landscape. With developers releasing hundreds of new iPad enhanced applications every day we are sure to see new clinical uses for the device and get a better picture of how it will emerge as a viable option for physician professional use.
That concludes this episode of Manhattan Research’s eHealth Trends podcast! Thanks for listening!
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