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I find this completely fascinating. Yes, the Apple Store is demoing various medical applications like EMR on the iPad. Here’s an excerpt from blogger Iltifat Husain walking into an Apple Store:

When I recently walked into my local Apple store to buy an iPad accessory, I saw a group of about 20 people huddled around a large LCD screen while an Apple employee was giving a workshop.

When I saw the LCD screen full of medical applications, I was shocked. This wasn’t your run of the mill “how to use your iPhone” workshop.

The people gathered for the workshop consisted of healthcare professionals in medicine, dentistry, and other fields. About a third of the group consisted of physicians.

The workshop was focused on how the iPhone and iPad can be useful for their practices and as reference tools for day to day work.

The workshop was led by an Apple employee who went through a slideshow presentation of useful medical applications, such as Epocrates, iMurmur, Airstrips OB, and many of the other useful applications we’ve featured on iMedicalApps before.
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Along with the presentation given by the Apple employee, a MacPractice representative was on hand to demonstrate their electronic health record and how it worked from the desktop to the iPhone and to the iPad.

Pretty interesting to see Apple committing that type of resource to marketing the clinical applications.

I first wrote about the possibility of an iPad EMR back in February when the iPad was first announced. At the time my speculation was that we wouldn’t see an iPad EMR developed, but that the iPad would have a significant impact on the EMR input methods.

Well, I guess I was wrong on one account. MangoMed has developed what their website calls an “iPad based EMR EHR.” I wonder if this was just a quick shift from being an EMR like all the rest and the company quickly just decided to capitalize on the PR that an iPad EMR would have. They’ll be interesting to watch. If I had an iPad I’d try out their EMR and give you a full recap. MangoMED EMR, want to buy me an iPad and I’ll review your EMR and post it on my site as payment?

I must admit that it’s not a bad initial move. I’m actually quite surprised how many people are searching for iPad EHR or iPad EMR or some variation on those terms. The other company that I think is likely to benefit from the iPad is the Epocrates EHR that was announced at HIMSS. Epocrates has been all about this type of form factor for a while and so they should definitely capitalize on that skill.

With all of this said, I still don’t see the iPad being a revolutionary device in the EMR world. Outside of my initial assertion that it will change EMR input methods that will then be implemented by other companies as well.

The hype over the new Apple iPad has been really interesting to watch. You can’t even buy one and everyone under the sun is speculating on how well the Apple iPad will do. Everything from it changing the netbook space to Grandma’s first computer being an iPad to the iPad as a gaming machine.

I’m certain that the iPad is going to be a huge gaming machine. The question I have is will the iPad be a game changer in the EMR world.

For those of you not living in the tech bubble that I live in, the iPad is most simply described as an iPhone with a much larger screen. Now I’m sure the purist out there might point out some other differences, but that’s kind of beside the point. The touch input method is the same as the iPhone and it also uses the cell towers to connect to the internet. It also runs the iPhone OS including all of the apps that have been created for the iPhone.

Back to the original question, will the iPad be a game changer for EMR. My prediction is that we really won’t see many iPad’s in healthcare much at all. Sure, there will be one here or there, but it won’t be widespread and we won’t see an “iPad EMR” that was designed to leverage the interface and technology of the iPad.

So, why would I even bring it up? Well, I don’t see the iPad EMR coming to fruition I do see the input technology that’s in the iPad and that will come out of the iPad having an effect on future input interfaces. Apple’s making a huge bet on touch interfaces with the iPad. the adpoption of touch interfaces and the technology that comes out of it is likely to have a huge influence on future EMR interfaces.

One of the biggest complaints doctors have about the various EMR systems is the challenge of inputting the data. Don’t be surprised if the future EMR input methods are heavily influenced by the introduction of the iPad and the technologies that develop around it.

News came out this week about a Dell EMR, which is really just a branded version of eCW and possibly some other EMR companies. However, no doubt Dell’s ability to sell software is going to be a nice marketing tool for the EMR companies with which they interact.

Neil Versel posted about some rumblings about Apple joining the EMR fray. There are some EMR vendors that are optimized for some of Apple’s devices. In fact, I’ve even seen some action towards some iPhone specific EMR companies. Also, I think it’s reasonable to think that Apple may come out with an Apple tablet soon and healthcare has always been a tablets favorite market.

Either way, it’s interesting to see all these big brands joining in with others already in the healthcare space. Are they chasing after the $36.3 billion in EMR stimulus money?