Several times a day, Frank Adams, a solo pulmonologist in New York City, uses his Apple iPad to access his practice's EHR, to review charts and prescribe medication, and to pick up e-mail messages from his staff. Only nine months since he purchased the device, he can't imagine his life without it: Having an iPad has improved Adams' work flow and made him more available to patients.
"If I get an emergency phone call at home or on the road I can call up a patients' record in a matter of seconds," he says. "Just last weekend someone called my answering service with a history of severe cough. I happened to be in the middle of Manhattan but spoke to the patient on my cell phone and decided that an antibiotic was indicated. I asked the patient if she had any drug allergies and she said she wasn't sure. I had taken the iPad with me since I was on call and quickly accessed my EHR and found that she did have a history of an allergic reaction to an antibiotic that I might have prescribed. I then e-prescribed an alternative drug."
These days, Adams is in good company.
In the year since the April 2010 release of the iPad, the most popular media tablet to date, Steve Jobs and Co. have changed the way people think about personal computing. Nearly 18 percent of 1,400 physicians surveyed for Physicians Practice's 2010 Great American Physician Survey said they used tablet computers. That poll ran from March through May of last year. And adoption continued at a rapid clip after that. According to a separate survey of 2,206 physicians and other clinical workers in January and February 2011 by Physicians Practice's parent company, UBM Medica, 38.5 percent said they plan to buy an iPad or other media tablet this year.
The iPad and its emerging rival tablets belong to a category of mobile computing devices defined by their shape, size, and power. They're lighter and thinner than laptops, feature touch-screen interfaces, take up less dimensional space than a piece of notebook paper, and can be held like clipboards. iPads look like blown-up iPhones.
At a growing number of practices, physicians, and supporting staff are using media tablets in lieu of laptops to do everything from collecting data to showing patients how a disease can manifest itself in their body to retrieving medication-allergy information in the dead of the night for a panicked patient.
But before joining the tablet party, you should consider how the devices compare with those mobile computing devices your practice may already know and love — specifically, smart phones and laptops.
Tablets vs. laptops
Whether they're using them to input patient data into an electronic chart or check on medication allergies, doctors say tablets' user-friendly design often make them preferable to laptops.
Because tablets are lighter and skinnier than laptops, they're also easier to carry. The iPad, for example, weighs 1.33 pounds and measures 9.5 x 7.31 inches, so it can be slipped into a briefcase or a purse. Other tablets, like the newly released BlackBerry Playbook, sport even smaller dimensions (5.1 x 7.6 inches; 0.9 pounds) and can fit into lab coat pockets.
And because they're lighter and skinnier than laptops, they're inherently less cumbersome.
Holding a tablet is similar to and easier than holding a clipboard; a physician can hold a tablet in one hand, and use his other hand to operate the touch screen. Laptops, of course, have the advantage of a physical QWERTY-style keyboard, but they're also bigger and bulkier. Carrying them around all day is a burden, and they rarely have more than a few hours of battery power.
However, the touch-screen interface of an iPad can be a problem — at least at first. Because most doctors are trained to type using a tactile keyboard, typing on a digital screen where there are no keys to push into can feel unnatural, slow down the input of information, and make you more prone to typos.
Barbara Morris, a pediatrician with 200-provider practice Community Care Physicians in Albany, N.Y., says the process of getting used to a touch-screen interface was one she had to "persevere through."
But so many other things about the iPad made it worth the effort. For example, Morris likes being able to expand images by moving just a couple of fingers outward.
Additionally, "the landscape view makes it easy to see stuff," she says. "Laptops have lightness, but not small physical size for carrying around."
Physicians who cannot bear the thought of doing without a tactile keypad do have a few options, however. They can buy a separate keyboard attachment to use in the office or at home (some models use Bluetooth radio frequencies to wirelessly connect to tablets). There is also the option of purchasing a hybrid "tablet" computer that looks and feels like a tablet when held, but comes with a slide-out or detachable keyboard.
