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iPad and Medicine. (Apps, stories, Medicine-iPad stuff)

VPDcurt said:
I'm currently a surgical resident and while the iPad is pretty cool, I definitely have little or no need for it in the hospital. The only medical app on my iPad is Medscape, which I haven't even used yet. I do use it on my iPhone occasionally to look up some obscure drug, but the iPad isn't terribly convenient in and around the hospital - if it doesn't fit in a scrub pocket, I don't carry it around with me. Well that and the fact that I don't want the iPad getting covered in MRSA/VRE.
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Maybe because the iPad's Apps aren't supported in your hospital. Having your hospital support it makes it a hundred times more useful and useable.

Anyway, I ordered an iPad 2 :D

Why, you ask.
1) The faster processor will improve the massive data loading.
2) It's white, so it fits much better here lol :rolleyes:
3) Every bit of light weight and thinness makes a big difference.
4) There isn't really a fourth reason but I wanted this list to look longer.

The best part is, I have to wait two weeks now, which isn't a big deal but its like its giving me a freaking timeout And I don't even know what I did wrong.
 
I am a 4th-year Med student, and I am in several contests to win iPad 2s. While my original plan was selling it/them, it is highly unlikely that I will be able to get to the goal I want: enough money for a MBA/MBP 13''. My 4-year old Sony Vaio laptop is going crazy right now.

That being said, I kind of admitted to myself that I will only get one of those laptops once I start working (in 2 years). As such, I am considering not selling the iPad 2. It'd be used for medical-app checking, e-mail on-the-go, web-browsing on-the-go, and possibly some keynote/pages presentations and music-creation. To be honest, all but the last two are doable on my current phone (I have no iOS device, only an Android Phone (ZTE Blade: CPU 600 MHz, 480*800 3.5'', with CyanogenMod Gingerbread).)


I was wondering if you think the iPad 2 would be a keeper , or if I should sell it and just limit my app-checking (mainly Medscape) to my phone.
 
Blues003 said:
I am a 4th-year Med student, and I am in several contests to win iPad 2s. While my original plan was selling it/them, it is highly unlikely that I will be able to get to the goal I want: enough money for a MBA/MBP 13''. My 4-year old Sony Vaio laptop is going crazy right now.

That being said, I kind of admitted to myself that I will only get one of those laptops once I start working (in 2 years). As such, I am considering not selling the iPad 2. It'd be used for medical-app checking, e-mail on-the-go, web-browsing on-the-go, and possibly some keynote/pages presentations and music-creation. To be honest, all but the last two are doable on my current phone (I have no iOS device, only an Android Phone (ZTE Blade: CPU 600 MHz, 480*800 3.5'', with CyanogenMod Gingerbread).)


I was wondering if you think the iPad 2 would be a keeper , or if I should sell it and just limit my app-checking (mainly Medscape) to my phone.
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It really depends on your needs and financial situation, If you really need the money and every bit helps, then obviously you should sell it, otherwise I would strongly recommend that keep it, especially that you are getting it for free, and if you are a 4th year medical student then chances are you're not crazy like some of us and choose not to specialize in a 7 years speciality, which means you'll start working soon and unless you are deep in debt then having a $499-$829 device should not be a problem.
 
I am a paramedic in a mid sized suburban fire department in Maryland. We currently use tough books for our electronic patient care reports. However there has been a lot of talk about switching to iPads...believ it or not.

The iPads are portable, light, and with a biohazard rated cover cover would be a great option.

Plus, they cost about 1/6 of the price.

Durability would be a major issue because, in the fire department, we break a lot of things.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of it. Mostly cuz I love my iPad. Who knows, well see. If they adopt it, I'll get on here and let you know how it works out.
 
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A very nice thread.
Before I ask my question let me introduce that I'm working for a bigger pharmaceutical company. Don't want mention any products or names.

But I really wonder: what can we do for you physicians ? I know you get a number of Reps visiting you ... How do you think iPad could make it less disturbing or more informative. As myself works in IT and a bit away from patients please help me to understand ...
 
Not in most cases

I personally don't think iPads are that useful unless your hospital is setup to use them. I have seen some doctors carrying them round but mostly its the posers, as they have very little real use and are currently more of a gimmick.

I love my iPad at home but an internet phone such as the iPhone is more useful at work to check the BNF, oxford handbooks or google the occasional obscure condition because its small and convenient. It would be amazing to access patient data, xrays, clerk ppl in etc using ipads but I have not heard of that in the UK.

Having patient data on your own personal device that you take home or give to children to play with, regardless of it being password protection is dangerous ground and could (at least in the UK) get you into bother. I think medical guidelines and technology will have to be looked at as we increasingly become paperless. Im all for iPads bought by hospitals to be used in hospitals and more technology in medicine to improve patient care.
 
Finally found a thread that helps! I'll be a final year student this autumn/fall and I've been wondering if I should get an iPad. I think an iPad would be a good investment as it's light and portable(one ipad compared to many, many thick, heavy textbooks), it's cheaper in the long run(at the place I live now, no one cares if we torrent so no need to buy textbooks anymore!), and it's really convenient when you need to look for information on the go.

That said, I have several concerns too. First, since I'm a final year student, I don't think I'll be using my ipad as much when I become a doctor. The healthcare system in my country has not caught up with this whole technology/digital bandwagon. Students and doctors have, at most, only oxford handbooks and maybe a smartphone with Medscape with them. And since I'll be an intern after I graduate, I don't see myself running around in the hospital with an ipad in my hands because I'd look ridiculous. But that's just me.

Also, budget. I just got a MBP last July so I don't think my dad will appreciate me asking for an iPad now. I've been saving but unless I spend every single dollar I've saved up, I can only afford the 16GB WIFI only model. I don't think the ipad will be of much use to me if I don't get the 3G model because I know there will be times where I'll need internet connection. I study in Russia and unfortunately, only very limited places have free WIFI and even when there is WIFI, the speed is excruciatingly slow. I'd be better off using my home internet and my LAPTOP.

I apologize if I sidetracked this topic but can anyone sound their opinions?

My own problems aside, I'm all for iPad in the healthcare system! One of the doctors I've met once said: "In the healthcare system, new information comes in and old informations become invalid every day. If we rely on physical books which only update their informations once in every few years, we won't be able to provide the latest and best treatment/care to our patients. So I want you guys to sign up for Medscape newsletters! Always visit pubmed! BMJ! New England Journal of Medicine!" iPad is the best portable tablet in the market so far that can benefit medical students and doctors, so why not?
 
My sister's a doctor, specializing in internal medicine and not only doesn't she have an iPad, she doesn't even have an email account and wouldn't know how to use it if she did. She is in a practice with other physicians though and they have personnel who conduct constant research on the latest advancements/treatments, organize and print it out because they can't take time away from patients to sit in front of computers doing research.

Ive tried talking with her, but every time without fail, she gets a call from the hospital or from a patient and has to run out the door. In her defense she does work long, hard hours and when she's not with patients, she's out advocating for them and finding creative ways to get their medication. Lot of her patients have AIDs and when they can't work and their insurance companies drop them, being able to afford medication becomes problematic.

After watching her run around like a chicken with it's head cut off for so many years, it's really refreshing to hear there are doctors out there who seem to have a little more spare time.
 
I am a 3rd year medical student (Want to be a Psychiatrist when I'm all done with school) who uses just some basic apps that people have already mentioned.

Here is a list of apps I use in no particular order:

-Epocrates: Full Edition
-Medscape
-UMMS Medical Info
-New England Journal of Medicine
-Dragon Medical Recorder (which is absolutely amazing)
-Dragon Medical Search (Again, awesome)
-Nervous System 3D
-3D Medical Images

OP, thanks for starting this thread!
 
Janet1 said:
After watching her run around like a chicken with it's head cut off for so many years, it's really refreshing to hear there are doctors out there who seem to have a little more spare time.
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I wish. Trust me when I tell you that most posters here including myself do not have any "spare time". As a Neurosurgical resident, I do not have the luxury of having spare time, I'm posting this post right now from the on-call room in my hospital.

I believe that it is related to whether you are interested or not interested in using technology to help you in your daily life, and as you said your sister is not, which is absolutely fine as long as she is getting updates on the latest.

I'd like to make myself clear on one thing, I am in no way dependent on the iPad in my residency, I would not be less of a resident if I didn't have one, I make the iPad usable not the other way around. But, every once in a while my AirStrip Patient Monitoring app beeps (Its not good when it beeps :)), So I run to my patients room like crazy before I even get paged, add that to the visuals that I show to the patients, all the others Apps, including a every patient's record, it is definitely worth it. And I don't always have my iPad with me, that would be inconvenient, I do not take it with me to the OR obviously, or anytime that I feel I'll be needing both my hands, which is pretty easy to drop at any of the many nurses' desks on my way running. By the way, if there is any nurse reading this, Thank you, I appreciate all your hard work.

But here is the thing, my hospital supports iOS to the fullest, they believe that technology will help us in this field, and I share that philosophy as well, therefore it makes my iPad 10 thousands time more usable than it would be had it not been supported.

Thanks for everyone who posted! :D
 
Apologies for the rant (slow call tonight, excuse the iPhone grammar)

If you're in the program and you still feel like you need to prove yourself past your intern year, you must have some fault you are not telling us (teamwork related is my guess) It seems like many things you talk about can be done faster safer and more efficiently using hospital computers and printing out notes. Looking at your iPhone/iPad during rounds/bedside is not only rude but gives off an air of inattention and narcism. You are probably looking something up, but others view you as being distracted. Your patients and attendings are older, you should be worried about impressing them, not the current generation of tech savvy individuals. The time will come when EMR will allow physicians to interact naturally with their patients, but we're nowhere near that level of interaction.

You mentioned a few things that are unsettling

You shouldn't need to have "every detail accessible to you", that's something you should be taking notes of ahead of time, not something to look up during a presentation.

Patients and chiefs might appreciate you finding a picture to show, but making a drawing for your patient shows confidence in your knowledge and benevolence to your patients.

(He obviously got the 64 GB 3G version with some extremely expensive leather case, why? because he can afford it. that and a Ferrari)

You're clearly in a field driven by $$$, and it saddens me you don't realize you are perpetuation the stereotype of a rich doctor that blows his money trying to have the biggest/best/most expensive _____ out there.

I was leaving the hospital parking lot last week waiting to make a left turn. I was graciously waved in by a physician that makes over $1.5mil a year, driving a humble Volvo sedan. Small minded individuals value themselves on what they have, confident people are valued for what they do.

/rant
=====================

As a reference/learning tool the iPhone/ipads are great I use Epocrates, Lexi complete, Dynamed, and uptodate via safari.

For the students out there. Technology is just one of many tools available for learning, what works for one person may not work for the next. Try to experiment with different types of media:notecards,notebooks,ppt slides,podcast lectures,textbooks, review books, etc and see what works for you. Personally the most powerful learning tool is the ability to condense massive amounts of information into a system of organization that makes sense TO YOU.
 
( lol that we're both up replying away in call rooms)

just read your last post ( I was replying to the first couple) so please take my response as being targeted only to those early post, you seem like steal nice guy in your last few posts (too tired to go back and edit on iPhone so apologies in advance for the overly negative criticism )
 
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Shenaniganz08 said:
( lol that we're both up replying away in call rooms)

just read your last post ( I was replying to the first couple) so please take my response as being targeted only to those early post, you seem like steal nice guy in your last few posts (too tired to go back and edit on iPhone so apologies in advance for the overly negative criticism )
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Don't worry about it, its all good.
I could see why you'd think what you thought in my first couple posts, maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. But I'm glad you took the time to read a little further where I made myself more clear.

I am not trying to prove anything to anyone other than myself, I realize that anything I say here could be easily discredited as it is the internet, and you have the right to take from it what you wish, but I finished top of my class in medicine school and it wasn't easy at all, but I'm very passionate about medicine so I only prove myself to others through my work and hopefully my personality.

I won't be replying to any other comment from your previous post as I hope my last posts would answer those, except that I absolutely agree with you that materials (such as a car) Does not define the doctor (or any person for that matter) but the other way around, in fact the Chief of surgery in my hospital drives a Citroen C5, and whenever people see that Citroen they take a deep breath and think, He's here. He makes his car great and respected and not the opposite.

You also seem like a decent guy, and again don't worry about it, I'd probably think the same thing if my opinion was only based on the first post or two. :)
 
FutureStan said:
I wish. Trust me when I tell you that most posters here including myself do not have any "spare time". As a Neurosurgical resident, I do not have the luxury of having spare time, I'm posting this post right now from the on-call room in my hospital.

I believe that it is related to whether you are interested or not interested in using technology to help you in your daily life, and as you said your sister is not, which is absolutely fine as long as she is getting updates on the latest.
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As she's explained it to me, it's not so much that she's not interested, but rather that it would only take away from the time she has to devote to her patients, and she would not be able to provide them with the same level of care.

As a resident, the hospital you work at probably doesn't provide you with a full staff of administrative and research personnel, so you don't receive the same type of support.

For example, I use Dragon myself, but it's not perfect, and does require manual corrections. That would take her far more time than simply dictating her notes, and giving them to her admin. staff to type. It's what they're trained to do, so their typing and organizational skills are also far superior to her own.

Their research staff not only have medical training and computer skills, but hold graduate degrees in library science as well. They are highly skilled experts at conducting searches and obtaining the most timely, relevant and useful information possible. She provides them with the medical condition and patient background, and they conduct the research and provide her with detailed reports, containing the all the relevant information to provide the patient with the best possible care.

Even if she had the time, every individual in the support staff is every bit as much of an expert in their fields as she is in hers. So deferring to their expertise is also just as important to ensuring patients receive the best possible care.

That said, I've downloaded some of the medical apps to show her how I feel that visuals depicting medical conditions could be highly beneficial in aiding patient understanding. Doctors seem to have a problem expressing themselves in layman's terms, and far too often, use technical terminology which is all but incomprehensible. Thank God for Medscape and WedMD, so we can go home after a doctor's visit, and make some sense out of, what sometimes sounds, like gibberish.
 
slightly illegal i guess but i want an ipad so that i can have a massive library of books on one device (medical and leisure).

thats my main reason for wanting an ipad.. a portable library for all my PDFs/journals/leisure books and the ability to read them, annotate them, bookmarks etc.

I think that in itself is awesome and when combined with all the other functions people have already mentioned, it becomes a really versatile tool.
 
Hi everyone, I've been using a MBP for years now and I'm on my second iPhone, the iPhone 4. I've finally just ordered an iPad2 online and hope to get it in about 2-3 wks unless the Foxconn explosion causes major delays.

I'm an HIV specialist in practise for the past 17 yrs. I have a few apps on my iPhone that I use regularly, but I'm looking forward to getting some of the apps that you have mentioned in this thread as the size of the iPad would make it much more useful than the iPhone.

I only have a few iPhone apps I use at work, the include ECG Guide, Qx Calculate, Heme Calc and Neph Calc.
 
Our free iPad Medical App facilitates communication with intubated patients

Hi All,

Check out Phrase Board. It's a free ipad app, not a "lite" version. It's an English language communication board for patients who cannot speak. It has "I feel, I want" statements, a pain chart where patients can tap on the location, frequency, and type of pain and rate pain on a 1 to 10 scale. There is a page where you can input stock phrases for frequent use and a whiteboard page to draw or write on. It was created in response to a mom in ipadforums who asked for a simple "yes/no" app for her quadriplegic son. I am a registered nurse and my husband creates financial apps and I asked him to create this. In addition, we are about to release a Spanish version as an in app purchase (to cover cost of free app and updates). If you have an interest in another language and can assist in the translation, please let us know.
 
Great forum. I just got an Ipad 2 and was wondering what apps I should get as I will soon be attending dental school. Will be looking into many of the ones listed here. Thanks everyone.
 
Great forum post! I myself have been looking at medical apps for my university since we are going to start a medical school in about two years and they are trying to embrace technology. It's great to see that there are so many apps out there and great to see that so many people have used them! With my research, not about the apps but on the cloud side, I have found a few good cloud based medical sites that act like apps, its not exactly like the actual medical apps but close. What I have found more and more are practice management software and billing software cloud based apps. Hopefully the rest of these forum post help me in my research for my school and hopefully I can convince them to get Ipads!
 
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iPad medical case study presentation and DICOM viewer for students and physicians

Hi,

the iPad app Med Presenter allows to study medical cases (DICOM images) on your iPad. It further provides a presentation mode that allows to view teaching material (PDF slides) and CT, MR, NM, PT, AX and XA images side-by-side. It even supports an external display to give presentations with own slides (e.g. created with Keynote or PPT) and imported DICOM images. The viewer is quite powerful, it is not limited to standard MPR orientations. The user can navigate MPRs through large image sets in any 3D orientation. Text annotations can be added into the image sets and personal notes can be send via e-mail with embedded screenshots of the MPRs. It allows students and physicians to work with teaching material and medical images anywhere. The data import is quite easy such that students can import DICOM images that are provided in their teaching course.

Here is the link:
http://itunes.apple.com/de/app/med-p...53019807?mt=8#

You can request a promo code for iTunes (the number of free codes is limited) at
medpresenter@chimaera.de

----------

http://itunes.apple.com/de/app/med-presenter/id453019807?mt=8#
 
I work on 3 different hospitals (1 public and 2 private ones), and while I don't take the iPad with me --mainly for fear of it getting stolen, since I've learned the hard way that in the hospital, ANYTHING you don't keep at all times with you, will get stolen-- the medical apps I have always on my iPhone and that I use daily are ePocrates, Pubmed on Tap, Medscape, Qx calculate, ABG, and my internal medicine and neurology/electrodiagnosis reference texts on PDF/ePub formats.
 
MsVetty said:
Hi All ... If you have an interest in another language and can assist in the translation, please let us know.
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Hi Ms Vetty, I tried to send you a private message, but you have deactivated them. I would like to help to translate your app. Besides english, I'm fluent in spanish and catalan, and I've been trained on Critical Care, Internal Medicine and Neurology, so maybe I can be of some help.
 
Hi all. I have been developing apps for the webOS platform but have also moved to multi-platform medical web apps. These are scaled for the iPhone (or any smartphone with webkit browsers) but all the apps can run offline if you save the shortcut on your Home screen.
I hope to do some resizing for the iPad in the future but if you want to check out my medical web app project, you can view/download the apps here:
http://medwebapp.com
 
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