Last month Information Week reported on a study by HIMSS of iPad use in health care.

Data showed that nearly 70% of the attendees were from hospitals or healthcare organizations with more than 1,500 employees, and 15% of attendees were executive-level staff or physicians.

More than 25% of the HIMSS respondents plan to deploy the iPad and other iOS devices immediately and nearly 70% plan to deploy the devices within the next year.

I must admit that I have been amazed at the uptake and power of the iPad. After attending the CES conference in Las Vegas last week, you can see a whole slew of iPad copy cat’s that are working to provide the same benefits of the iPad. There’s no doubt that health care will be a major user of this type of device.

The information week article does point out the two biggest challenges with the iPad in health care:

Nearly 75% identified secure configuration and deployment as the number one iPad IT management challenge, and 53% identified mobile application deployment as a key issue.

Security is definitely an important concern that will be ongoing, but is definitely manageable. Then, it’s just getting software vendors to actually leverage an iPad device and it’s unique interface as opposed to just porting their current interface to the iPad. This will take some time.

Now I just need to find a way to get me an iPad. I bet they’ll have a bunch of free iPad giveaways at HIMSS. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

Guest Blogger: Richard has over 15 years of experience as product manager and public policy analyst. He is currently researching the use of technology to improve health care access. You find more of Richard’s writing on his blog.

No doubt, electronic medical record (EMR) buyers would love to wave their hands and clear the fog that envelops the EMR software purchase process.  Buyers’ uncertainty and distrust combine to create angst and skepticism that their purchase will be the correct one.

One tool to navigate this process: Like a doctor taking a medical and family history, the history and heritage of an EMR vendor can tell you much about the direction and competency of offerings.

Vendors for large customers (hospitals over 250 beds and physician groups over 100) have a historical software competency much like a DNA thread of a virus, with many of the distinct markers carried down to descendents. In the case of software, it is the concept of how the software is built that is carried through each revision and new product.

Prior to EMRs, software was created to register and bill patients and to reconcile financial transactions and records. That is their core competency and strength. To leap to EMR is a complete anathema to the financial paradigm. While orderly in the financial side, the EMR side is counterintuitive to them and their software shows that monolithic belief that once a design has been settled, little else can be done to customize it for future use.

Like their larger brethren, smaller EMR vendors who specialize in the primary care medical market have difficulty in accommodating subspecialties.  That’s because primary care tends to be more uniform in their approach than subspecialists who are much more fragmented than primary care. That fragmentation creates numerous requests for special features that may not be economically feasible for a small EMR vendor.

In summary, the heritage of an EMR vendor won’t ensure that you will be satisfied with your purchase. It will, however, make you aware of the bias and alert to how that may translate to functionality and support.  Vendors can change, but it’s difficult to break that “DNA lineage” unless there is an abrupt break from the past. The next time a sales representative hails you for a sales presentation, look a bit closer at the history and values of the vendor. It might just save you money.