DrChrono Blog

Apple is going to change the way we think of healthcare as we know it. How? That is a good question to be asking yourself.

Healthcare hardware has always been on the expensive side. Buying hardware for $20,000 is the norm and accepted in healthcare.

Things are now changing…thank you apple.

Now we have the ability to build on hardware that is inexpensive. Physicians can purchase, expect and get hospital software and services on one small device, an iPhone or an iPad. We can now take hospital level hardware and place it onto one small “slate”…the iPad.

One critical issue that is now going away, the famous “battery life” issue. Testing out our initial batch of iPads for a few months now we see that the battery life is around 10 hours! It naturally fits into a doctors work flow. No more worrying about dragging around a heavy laptop that needs to be plugged in every few hours.

At first I was worried that the iPad was going to be expensive, at $499.00 for a base iPad, they really have given a great product at a bargain. (Click here for apples current iPad prices.)

The screen resolution on the iPad and iPhone 4G is impeccable. With resolutions as high as they are on these two devices you can see higher image resolutions then ever before, again this is critical to physicians. Looking at X-Rays, Cat scans or EKG’s, you get better resolution then ever seen before on mobile devices of these sizes. The iPhone 4G has a “retina display” with four times the pixel density of a typical LCD display at a whopping 326 pixels per inch—by far denser than anything else in the consumer electronics market. The result is a 3.5-inch display with a native resolution of 960 by 640 pixels that is actually a higher resolution than the typical human eye is capable of perceiving, when held at a distance of just 10 to 12 inches!

I thought that the iPhone 4G would be extremely expensive, I was wrong again! You can get an iPhone 4G at $199.00!

Another great part about all of this is internet redundancy. What do you do if your internet cable modem goes down? Simple switch over to your telecom provider (AT&T) connection. Redundant internet connection sources are important and I recommend them. If you are a physician get the “Wi – Fi + 3G” version of the iPad…it will give you peace of mind the day that you have an intermittent cable modem connection.

I think Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley of the Startup Success Podcast hit it right on the nail, listen to this clip.

What about all of the paper a physician will be saving by using these devices also!…The list goes on and on.

(If you are interested in seeing the Steve Jobs talk about the iPhone 4G, here is over an hour of video of just, he was at the WWDC conference, this was the keynote talk.)