Before iPad, There was Newton

By now, practically everyone on the planet knows that Steve Jobs and Apple introduced on Wednesday the iPad tablet, the machine That Will Change The World As We Know It Forever.

But, based on my experience, the Apple Newton, the iPads's predecessor in many ways, nudged military medicine towards development of the kind of electronic health record system that President Obama wants every clinician in the country to embrace.

I covered the event to introduce the Newton on Aug. 13, 1993, at Symphony Hall in Boston for Federal Computer Week .

Apple set up display areas to show applications for the Newton from various developers, including something called ProMed, which KPMG had developed for Walter Reed Army Medical Center. It blew my mind.

The app, according to a report , "replaced cumbersome, paper-based processes and allowed practitioners to practice medicine in a more naturalistic way."

The Newton and ProMed, and its primitive (by today's standards) wireless communications systems, untethered military docs from paper charts at a nurse's station and allowed them to interact with electronic records while standing at a patient's bed.

Apple later killed the Newton because of its primitive handwriting recognition software did not exactly thrill users, but at Walter Reed, the Newton definitely kick started a revolution in military medicine that reverberates today.