When the original iPhone was announced back in 2007 I was contacted by a member of the medical industry who believed that the phone, with it’s large touchscreen, Wi-Fi connectivity and simplicity, would be the future for a paperless medical system. He believed that hospital staff would no longer require paper and patients’ notes would never be lost, as all data would be entered on the phones and synced to a server. I agreed with him and, once the AppStore went live, we saw quite a few interesting and clever medical uses for the iPhone and iPod Touch; from reminding patients when to take medication, to keeping track of personal fitness and, most recently, the case where a victim of the Haiti earthquake used an application to assess his wounds and treat himself before rescuers arrived.
While these applications proved useful, no one introduced the iPhone to hospital wards as a replacement for paper. But the iPad, with it’s much larger 9.7” screen has the chance to change this.
As the hype surrounding the iPads announcement subsided I was contacted by Software Advice.com who have conducted a survey asking 178 physicians, nurses, medical students and healthcare IT professionals about what the healthcare industry’s ideal tablet would look like,
When asked if they would buy an iPad or similar for healthcare use – so to actually be used at work, not just at home by someone who happens to be a doctor – 54% said they would be very likely or somewhat likely to purchase a tablet.
With regard to how these medical workers would use their tablet, over 80% said they’d use it for lab orders and results, prescriptions references and notes and memos. That last one, note-taking, is where I think a tablet such as the iPad could be big business in hospital wards. Imagine if each doctor and nurse had a tablet synced up to the hospital server over Wi-Fi and could access notes for every patient on the ward. They could add to and edit these notes as and when required and every tablet would update instantly, allowing all staff to be up-to-date on the status of every patient, all of the time. Staff could also email updates of a patient’s condition to family members who are unable to be at the hospital.
Over half of the 178 medical staff surveyed said that ease of use was their most important feature of a tablet. This is great news forth iPad as I;d imagine many staff already have an iPhone or iPod Touch, so are already very familiar with the software and how the operating system works. Many staff would presumably be put off using a tablet with an unfamiliar user interface.
Despite having a finger touchscreen – favoured to using a stylus by 63% of those surveyed – the iPad will have virtually no medical software when it goes on sale in March, as the vast majority of medical software found in hospitals uses Windows operating systems, not Mac. And with 70% naming a wide selection of medical software as a must-have for the tablet, the iPad starts to fall short of the mark. In fact, of the 10 must-have features suggested by Software Advice the iPad has just two; Wi-Fi access, a light weight and an ergonomic design.
If you’d have asked me 2 weeks ago if the iPad would be a great appliance for a paperless system in hospital wards, I would have said yes; but the lack of crucial hardware like a barcode scanner, fingerprint scanner, integrated camera and Oyster card-style RFID reader makes the iPad unsuitable for most medical situations. Add this to the software issues mentioned above and the iPad seems completely unsuitable for a role in hospital. As Chris Thorman of Software Advice concluded; healthcare wants a tablet, healthcare likes the iPhone, but this does not translate to healthcare liking the iPad. So any Apple fanboy like me reading this; do please remember that your high horse isn’t really that tall and when it’s bolting as fast as Apple’s is, then it’s easy to fall off.
You can find the full survey results at www.softwareadvice.com
Alistair
iPad Applications Blog 