Too big to carry around, and the keyboard is too slow to type medical record notes.
I guess it would be useful to look at x-rays at the bedside, although the resolution is probably not up to par. (Don't recall right off hand what the resolution of our dedicated PACS monitors are.)
Lots of doctors already use tablets without keyboards. The iPad will definitely be popular amongst medical staff, but that represents a very small percentage of the consumers that Apple is targeting.
I guess it would be useful to look at x-rays at the bedside, although the resolution is probably not up to par. (Don't recall right off hand what the resolution of our dedicated PACS monitors are.)
Looks like it wouldn't be that bad... I see some 2 MP (1600x1200) monitors being marketed as PACS quality. That's the bottom of the line, but still, a small light tablet for this purpose with a resolution of 1024x768at 132 ppi? Would work quite well.
The Medical field is completely devoid of any creativity or imagination.
"This is how it's always been done" is their answer to most questions.
The iPad is too good to stoop to that level.😛
^^^ Yes. If it makes the job easier and note taking more efficient.
A touchscreen tablet is exactly what I would have wanted to integrate all clinic notes centrally when I worked in and ran a clinic.
Having a clinic notes app with various customizable menu options (kind of like the register menu on a touchscreen at Starbucks) would make putting together on-the-spot notes while taking to a patient easy and quick.
I may be negative on the iPad, but price isn't it. $500 is nothing -- literally nothing -- to hospitals and healthcare industries. They spend hundreds of dollars on just one pill or injection. Tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on advanced monitoring machines. And millions of dollars on stuff like advanced CAT scan and MRI machines. Millions. To say nothing of staff salaries and malpractice insurance, which costs millions and millions of dollars per year.
An iPad at $500, even if they bought 1000 of them, isn't even a rounding error at a small healthcare institution.