Mobility - Now in Tablet Form

One of our Application Engineers here at Amcom is a huge Apple guy, and the iPad is his toy of the moment. With such excitement from a gadget geek like Paul, I wondered if our customers shared the same enthusiasm for this and other tablet PCs. So at our recent Connect 10 Philadelphia area user conference, we asked.

Our user events always include an open forum discussion on some of the trends our customers are seeing in both their industry and their facility. The discussion always seems to come around to mobility and emerging devices. While the BlackBerry remains king in healthcare, we’ll hear about numerous others also making an appearance. And among those, sure enough – the iPad.

But exactly what for? While attendees of our conference did report seeing the iPad at their hospitals, it wasn’t as widely reported as the iPhone or Android. However, keep in mind this is a crowd – and an event – focused on communications, which is not the area where a tablet PC’s capabilities would be most appreciated.

Looking forward I see two major trends that would directly favor tablets: patient satisfaction and EMR/EHR.

Tablets give physicians a tool with which to greatly improve their bedside manner and the way in which caregivers directly interact with patients. Imagine lying in a hospital bed when your doctor walks in with an iPad (instead of a clipboard) tucked under her arm. She sits next to you as she shares a 3D CAT scan image along with imagery related to a scheduled procedure.

Access to EMR/EHR data would also lend itself perfectly to sharing via tablet. Software vendors such as Epic are introducing iPhone applications for their EMR, so the demand is there. Tablets are just the next step up and allow for sharing, quite similar to the patient-caregiver interaction described above.

Although tablets probably won’t ever be as mobile as a pocket-sized smartphone, we still see them as a viable endpoint for mobile communications. As long as doctors and other hospital staff are carrying a tablet, why not message to it? The more popular a device, the more it’s going to be right in front of a doctor’s face – and therefore a perfect endpoint for critical lab results, consult requests and so forth. I can see an iPad running the Mobile Connect iPhone client, receiving messages generated from a web directory system via WiFi connection. Any why not? This isn’t too far afield from where Amcom is today.

Tablets have their share of negatives as well. The iPad OS probably doesn’t fit within most hospital IT department’s Windows preference. The price might also limit how many devices a hospital can deploy, which combined with the fact that many tablets are somewhat fragile definitely does not make it a medical-grade device. And the iPad specifically doesn’t include a hot-swappable battery, which surely won’t match most shift times.

We at Amcom are watching with excitement as yet another wave of mobile devices enters the market. Time will tell just how much a part of patients’ and caregivers’ lives these devices will become, and we plan on keeping a close eye on the progress to plan how we might fit in.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on how you see tablets impacting care at your facility. Is there a communications element, or do you see it strictly as a data access device? Leave us a note below!