We all know that Apple will be announcing a tablet pretty soon. It's rumored to be called the iPad (and by now, I think we can depend on all the circulating rumors). According to FierceMobileHealthcare, there are rumors of the Apple tablet circulating among doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Maybe this is not the consumer prototype and maybe Apple will launch a professional version of the iSlate for health care professionals. We really don't know and I'm not about to start rumors.
We all know that many physicians (and medical students) carry iPhone. Many nurses (and nursing students) also use the iPhone. The same can be said of pharmacists and all other healthcare professionals. So, if people are comfortable with the iPhone interface, then the iPad should be a piece of cake. We will definitely see more mobile devices used in the hospital setting. The iPad may even replace the use of some Mobile Clinical Assistants (maybe the iPad will clip to a mobile base that incorporates things like a barcode scanner, RFID reader, etc.).
There absolutely needs to be a mobile computing interface geared towards physician in a hospital and clinical setting. However, I think much more important than that is going setting standards for EMR to communicate with a competing EMR. If every word processing program out there had a file extension that could not be read by other word processing programs we would still be using typewriters! In the same vein by have data that can "travel" we can decrease cost (think redundant testing), decrease risk (think drug-seekers in the ER), and improve health (amazing data for large scale public health research).
ReplyDeleteI fear that in the rush to make a great interface we're forgetting about the practicality of the system.