Welcome to EMR and EHR

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.