TechWag

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Admitted that Software Advice is biased towards medical records, but as more people want to have an Mac Tablet (I am one of them, and really want to get one when/if they ever come out), Software advice comes up with a compelling argument for a Mac Tablet when it comes to medical records. All they would need is a zoom function built in (magnifying glass) and it would all be set.

Software Advice comes up with four compelling reasons why an Apple ITablet would be indispensible to the medical market, and I agree with their summation. In a previous life I spent four years at a medical insurance company, and know some of the pitfalls of the industry. I’ll have to lift whole cloth here because they state it better than I can.

An Apple tablet would be the ultimate UI for electronic medical records. With a touch-screen display like the iPhone, using the EMR during an encounter would be simplified. For example, selecting an evaluation and management (E&M) code could be as easy as “dialing in” the code with a swipe of a finger.

Using the iPhone’s intelligent keyboard technology, the device could have a very sophisticated automatic coding tool. Some EMRs can already auto-generate E&M codes based on information collected during the patient encounter. Combine this with the iPhone’s keyboard word suggestion tool, and physicians could rapidly select codes. Additionally, just as the iPhone adapts its keys and layout for different applications, the Mac Tablet could display a unique keyboard setting for each EMR function.

Using iPhone speech recognition technology, physicians could dictate directly into an EMR to create notes, draft narrative reports or generate custom patient instructions. Mac design programs could be repurposed to make a really slick tablet drawing tool for anatomical diagrams that illustrate procedures and diagnoses.

A large-scale and fully-functional version of the iPhone could also lure third party developers. As of March 26th, there were 30,000 third party iPhone applications. Think how many more a Mac Tablet would attract; we could certainly expect to see some innovative mash-ups. Here’s one for starters: using Google search by voice, physicians could recite a disease into the Mac Tablet, then receive a list of diagnosis codes. This would be especially useful as there are thousands of diagnosis codes and many of them are revised on a regular basis. Source: Software Advice

Some of the reasons why this would be hard would be the adoption schema in terms of what medical doctors and their insurance companies deal with. There is a lot of resistance to bringing in technology that does not have an immediate benefit, but the argument is that an apple tablet would have one in just ease of use and hopefully performance. The RAM would have to be beefy; it would probably work best with SDD hard drives, both technologies Apple excels at with their proven IPhone platform. Then there is the idea of mashups. There are some fantastic software developers out there for the IPhone, they would make very cool things for doctors along the way.

The drawbacks would be is if the Apple ITablet had to become a FDA certified device (although there is no reason to do so that I can think of, it would not be farfetched to think that it would not happen) because of the certification levels that FDA controlled devices have to go through. Otherwise, this is a great idea, and one that could corner the medical device market. Everyone would jump on this one, and would be well worth the time/money invested.

The question is will Apple listen to me and Software Advice?

Tags: Technorati, apple, itablet, medical, devices, fda, medicine, medical devices, cool, idea