I recently finished an elective in pediatric infectious disease elective, and just prior, was gifted an iPad 2. Combined with a portable keyboard, it became one of the most useful tools in my medical arsenal. I was able to type notes and save them with Dropbox, increasing efficiency since I type more quickly (and more legibly) than I write, enhancing note taking during lectures, and allowing me to reference textbooks while discussing a patient.
Many of my colleagues made mock-fun of me, but as Bryan Vartabedian writes on 33charts, the future of medicine is in physicians embracing technology. Another resident on this elective with me does not, using an old Blackberry without any of my “essential” medical applications (such as Medscape), and even he became smitten with using Dropbox to synchronize our notes. As this is a relatively new field, I’ve made sure to attempt to be HIPAA-compliant by only using patient initials and bed numbers in my notes.
Combined with applications like Dragon Dictation (free!), I can see how the old-style dictation into a phone that someone subsequently transcribes and sends back to the hospital will become obsolete. DD is pretty accurate for “regular” speaking, but its attempts at medical-speak are pretty humorous. Radiologists routinely use real-time dictation systems, but I’m sure both of these approaches have a hefty cost associated with them. A relatively small initial investment of an iPad and some as-yet-unwritten medical dictation system could revolutionize things, especially considering all the other functions it can serve.
I love living in the future.
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Related articles
- Doctors Love the iPad. But What’s the Prescription for Tablet Security? (blogs.forbes.com)
- How To Store Your Files in The Cloud – And Why You’d Want To (readwriteweb.com)
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