By
John Pulley
Health IT companies are scrambling to develop medical apps for the iPad, whose popularity among physicians has taken the industry by surprise, CNBC reports on Wednesday.
"It's created quite a disruption for the health-care IT vendors," health-care IT analyst John Moore of Chilmark Research tells the business-news cable channel. "It's very challenging as to how to prioritize this."
CNBC says electronic health record implementation is driving iPad interest among physicians, who use the lightweight tablet computer at bedside to input and track patient information, among other tasks. The health IT industry has focused largely on EHRs, and the iPad represents an easy way for doctors to fit EHRs into their work processes.
"I would call this a perfect storm for medicine," Dr. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, tells CNBC. "You have alignment of funding; a cultural change where doctors want to use devices to improve quality. You also have new devices and new software that is much easier to use."
Thanks to the rapidly growing demand, health IT vendors are integrating iPad functionality into their EHR products, CNBC says. GE Healthcare, for example, is offering a free iPad 3G to doctors who order its Centricity Advance EHR software platform before March 31, according to the report. The company plans to release a dedicated iPad app in the second quarter.
"All of them without exception are building an iPad application because customers are demanding them," Moore is quoted as saying.
iPad medical apps aren't just for inputting information or tracking patient progress. Doctors also can access high-resolution graphics to explain medical conditions and treatments to patients, CNBC notes. What's more, the Food and Drug Administration has approved some diagnostic apps for X-rays and other imagery.
Not to be outdone in the growing medical app market, the makers of BlackBerry and Android devices also are releasing new devices, such as the BlackBerry-based Playbook tablet set to be introduced next month by Research In Motion.