"Tablet" from the iPad. Why iPad does not need doctors

Working as a doctor and being turned on new technologies, I enthusiastically accepted the news about the appearance of tablets.
“Class! - I thought, - because medicine has always adopted the most advanced technologies and solutions! ”

Indeed, IBM, in parallel with its first IBM 701 computer, manufactured cardiopulmonary circulation machines in the fifties, and the first mainframe programs analyzed the ECG . In the eighties, doctors appeared personal computers and computer tomographs, in the nineties - in vitro fertilization technology, in the two thousandth - a medical robot .
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Naturally, the appearance of the iPad caused a real sensation .
News feeds are full of pictures from the near future, where every district doctor has a magic iPad. Domestic IT-companies with might and main are developing medical iPad applications .
Even the President fell victim to the news from Cupertino!

Why in reality is not so rosy?
Why tablets for a long time (years, maybe a decade), the entrance to mass medicine will be ordered?

I will try to answer this question.

Firstly, the first “progressive” impression of public health is deceptive: in fact, medicine is one of the most conservative areas of activity. From the appearance of the novelty to its mass introduction it has been going on for many years

The inertia of the system is huge. For example, more than twenty years have passed since the first successful diagnostic laparoscopy to its mass introduction. Or in vitro fertilization - the first child was born in 1978, but this technology became widespread in the 21st century.
And it is not (only) in Russia.

Secondly, the iPad ... is inconvenient for the doctor and nurse in their practice!

iPad:

• 1. Do not put in your pocket
• 2. “Turns off” one or both hands from work: it must be constantly placed or removed somewhere for examination of the patient, any manipulation. Do not hang it on the neck!
• 3. Fragile, can not stand even falling to the floor.
• 4. It has little dirt, water, blood and pus protection.
• 5. Not sterile, not sterilized (because of the capacitive screen, even covers are difficult to use)
• 6. It is impossible to make handwritten notes on it, and typing text at the bedside with one finger is slow and inconvenient.
• 7. iPad is a personalized device that is tied to a doctor (like a mobile phone), which makes it “non-transferable” (nontransferable), while the medical history is “tied” to the patient, and it can easily be given to a nurse or a consultant.
• 8. He is dear. Compared with paper and pen - hundreds of times.

In my opinion, the main problem lies in the fact that the tablet is primarily a device for information consumption, and it lacks interfaces for its quick and easy entry.

I would call a number of organizational reasons that prevent the popularization of tablets:

• 1. Heads of institutions, doctors of the “old” school sometimes do not even speak well of mobile phones.
• 2. Even in the USA in 90% of hospitals there are NO electronic document management systems , doctors prefer paper. Moreover, a full-fledged electronic document management system is present only in 1.5% of hospitals !!! ( Status for 2009 )
• 3. At this stage, there is a whole “zoo” of IT systems in hospitals, consisting of “chimeras” (especially in Russia)
• 4. Naturally, in most hospitals, the used electronic document management systems are not designed for tablets, because ...
• 5. ... There are no standard software solutions for iPad compatible with hospital systems
• 6. Few places have all-hospital WI-FI networks
• 7. Security issues, lack of professionalism of IT departments in hospitals (where they exist)
• 8. Unfulfilled conflicts in legislation - “a computer is not a document, a document is a case history”

So what is the fate of the iPad and tablets in healthcare?

My opinion is optimistic: over time, the tablets will take over many of the functions that are currently performed by stationary computers, especially paramedical computers:

• - work with the schedule of receiving patients / operations,
• - planning,
• - control appointments
• - access to medical literature and periodicals
• - “illustrated” conversations with patients
• - discussion of interesting findings ( what do you think is this thing in the picture? ), Etc.

As for medicine itself, something more should happen than the appearance of tablets. There will be a lot of small steps. A quiet revolution will occur in the interfaces of medical devices so that they become intuitive, voice input devices will gradually appear, touch panels will become cheaper and become habit, reliable wireless technologies will connect all devices, from MRI tomograph to bedside monitor, to a single secure network, and Bind all the information to a specific patient.

And then the tablet will become a convenient assistant doctor.
But it will all come true oh, how soon.

PS I hope for an interesting discussion in the comments!