Doctors Adopting IPad Use Nationwide To Enhance Medical Care. Institutions Buy In. Apple The New Healthcare Company.

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Jeffrey Newman

Ipad purchases by and for physicians is doctors is occurring nationwide on a large scale. Present uses are diverse and are making the doctors more effective, efficient and accurate but the near and longer term project even greater and more diverse platforms for the Ipad. The size, weight and battery life, as well as the rich graphics and high speed of the present models have made the device a must have for managers, surgeons, nurses, emergency room physicians, anesthesiologists, hematologists and oncologists. The list goes on. For example the Kaweah Delta Health Care District in Visalia California has purchased more than 70 Ipads and more than 60 doctors own their own. They are used to examine x-rays and electrocardiogram results. Home health care workers access monitoring programs. Kaweah plans to have more than 300 Ipads in use within the next few months. The Orthopaedic Surgery Department at Loyola has purchased Ipads for all of its residents and is expanding the program to include all attending physicians. They use Ipads to access drug reference guides and electronic medical records. Surgeons are also using them in the operating room as reference tools. At Georgetown University in Washington DC Ipads have been given to all of the surgeons who use them to access up to date lab data, CT scans and x-rays. At Stanford School of Medicine, Ipads are given to all incoming students. RehabCare, operating nursing facilities in many states has deployed Ipads throughout its system for use at point of care. Several medical centers are using the Ipads for patient communications and treatment. Others use educational apps to confirm correct diagnoses and review medical research in difficult cases. As the Ipad and similar devices become an accepted part of medical care, the potential for its integration into new medical advances is more probable. For example,  new technology  is under development which will allow for real time monitoring of a person’s blood without penetrating the skin. When this is perfected, which is soon, the Ipad will be a natural technology of choice for integration for detailed 24 hour evaluation of bloods on a 24 hour basis. Diagnosis will take on a different meaning for a number of disorders including chronic and acute diseases which can be seen first in the bloods. In addition, the platform is enhancing collaboration between experts in different fields in problems cases as they relate to both diagnoses and treatment. A pathologist at MGH is presented with a unique pattern within the cells of a bone marrow sample and in a case where precision and speed mean life or death for the patient, in moribund condition. He touches the screen to forward a digital image of the slide to three colleagues at The Mayo  Clinic in Minnesota, John’s Hopkins in Baltimore and UCLA in LA. The pathologists, who, by agreement, confer with each other at no cost. All take the time to review the images and send their opinion WITHOUT CONFERRING WITH EACH OTHER and the MGH physician and the patient benefit immediately by this crowd sourcing convergence, which should be the hallmark of U.S. medicine, but has not been, until now. None of this has been lost on Apple, which has a growing team of consultants and software developers monitoring the various uses of the Ipad in action and who brainstorm about the integration of the platform in more practical ways of strengthening out medical system and ways to save moneys. A lot of discussion involves teleconferencing with patients. Physicians who have the new Ipad can immediately confer via videoconference with chronically ill patients, which will require some interface with the patient, possibly a lower cost Iphone for the sole purpose of speaking and seeing your doctor. This will save costs for the hospitals when visits are not necessary and will also assure prompt and correct treatment. In addition, much thought is given to training of new physicians, who can now view the entire process of diagnosis and treatment in the form of recorded and edited videos of patient interaction by disorder. This is expected to advance the understanding of new physicians of the nuances of some medical care significantly, for example in the evaluation and treatment of neurological disorders. In addition, Apple and a number of other companies are closely examining the connection between increased use of the IPad and electronic records and the field of data mining for new medical therapeutics. That is a story for a different day.