Feature: Planning for healthcare's future with iPads

iPad Home Screen Image Source: Apple

Although it was just released in April, Apple's iPad has been on the minds and in the hands of numerous healthcare professionals seeking a balance between the convenience of their smartphones and the screen areas of laptops. While Apple has reportedly sold two million iPads globally as of the end of last month, early healthcare provider adopters have found the device, its uses and environment are already in flux.

Some facilities are currently in the investigative phases to determine where—or if—the iPad will fit into their facility and physicians’ workflow. Weighing in at 1.5 pounds and boasting up to 10 hours of battery life, the iPad has many CMIOs excited over its usability and 3G or Wi-Fi internet access.

In preparation to go live with an Epic Systems EMR late in 2011, senior executives at Tampa General Hospital are researching the benefits that iPads can offer their facility. To ease into the workflow, Tampa will roll out to the executives’ mobile business capabilities, including e-mail and calendar, for personal devices this month. The second deployment, set for the EMR go-live date in 2011, will give users access to clinical data.

“We tried to roll out tablets in the ER before and they were a miserable failure,” said Richard L. Paula, MD, CMIO at Tampa General. “They were unwieldy, heavy and the battery life was awful. The iPad solves those problems.”

Tampa plans to offer the native iPhone application, Epic’s Haiku, to its physicians on the EMR go-live date. Therefore, according to Paula, no separate programming is needed to interface clinical data. Privileged users will be able to access the central database and patient information remotely from their iPhones. No data is stored on the phone’s hard drive, so the information is also HIPAA-compliant, Paula states.

Epic will translate the Haiku application into an application developed for the iPad called Canto, “with similar functionality yet more capabilities due to a larger screen,” Paula said. “Once iPads come into play, I have a vision for them being widely deployed throughout the hospital.” Tampa plans to support clinicians with individually owned iPads at an enterprise level by allowing any physician with privileges to download the Canto program and have access to patient data.

“Doctors will be able to carry an iPad and access data during rounds as they walk from room to room, and they’ll be able to show patients data on the device’s screen face-to-face with the patient,” he said. One Haiku app that Paula hopes will also be in Canto is Nuance’s Dragon Medical voice recognition software for transcribing physician’s notes.

The Haiku application does not have images and with functionalities unknown at this point for Canto, it’s hard to say if Epic will include images in the iPad application, Paula said.

Planning and anticipation is fundamental for the rollout’s success, said Paula. “We know physicians like this technology, so we are being proactive to support and deploy the use of these devices.” Paula expects his facility to be better positioned to move forward as technology and device usability changes.

The Pennsylvania State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and Pennsylvania State College of Medicine are identifying advantages to workflows from devices including the iPad, said Christopher J. DeFlitch, MD, CMIO, vice-chair of the department of emergency medicine at Penn State Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa. “We're determining the sweet spot for each device in terms of provider role, locations of use and most importantly, the workflow of providers in an increasingly complex clinical environment,” he said.
 
“It’s about how clinicians use of technology to help the care of the patient, it’s not about the application or device,” said DeFlitch. “The iPad has a role in the healthcare industry. The question is where and how does it compare to other devices.”