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Several industries have taken an interest in the iPad since its 2010 unveiling, but healthcare has been one of the quickest to adopt it.

No numbers exist for iPad sales specific to health care, but major institutions such as Stanford University School of Medicine in California hand them out to medical students and other physicians.

What is it about the iPad that makes it so attractive to healthcare professionals?

  • ease of use
  • size
  • portability
  • long-lasting battery power
  • relatively low cost of adoption

Most doctors spent the early years of their careers using paper charts. If they wanted to go electronic without being tied down to a computer terminal, they had to use laptops—but laptops are too heavy and awkward to use as easily as a paper chart.

Many physicians and nurses feel that the iPad is the next best thing to paper charts, useful technology for a price that doesn’t break the bank.

Earlier tablets were bulky or heavy and too expensive, with many selling for thousands of dollars. These early versions tried to replicate the feeling of using paper charts by allowing physicians to write on the screen, then have their scrawl translated by a desktop computer into permanent records. But the penmanship didn’t always translate correctly, and having the record transferred off the tablet didn’t allow physicians to have fingertip access to records.

One of the biggest criticisms about the iPad—that it’s simply an oversized iPhone—ended up being one of the things doctors liked about it. They feel the iPad brings the same utility and ease of use that attracted so many physicians to the iPhone. The iPad takes all those features to the next level, making it possible, and practical, to adopt it as a clinical tool.

The most popular applications physicians used on the iPhone were drug reference tools and e-prescribing systems. But the iPhone’s usefulness was limited because of its three-inch screen. The iPad screen is larger, which eliminates that limitation.

“The iPad brings you back to the patient’s bedside,” says Steven K. Libutti, MD, a surgeon and oncologist who is director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Cancer Care in New York.

About 80 more tablet models are expected to be launched to compete with the iPad, with most of them working much like it—the ease of touching instead of typing, the capability to download applications and the ability to “flip” through pages instead of entering long URLs.

As predicted two decades ago, it looks like the tablet computer has become the technology choice of doctors.

Want to know more about medical technology? Morgan Hunter Healthcare is here to help! Contact us today with any questions about the latest developments in the industry.

 

About Morgan Hunter HealthSearch
Morgan Hunter HealthSearch (MHHS) provides Executive Search and Interim Leadership solutions for hospitals and health systems throughout the United States.  Our services include executive healthcare recruiting, retained healthcare executive search, healthcare interim management, executive placement for hospitals

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