Apple Unveils iPad Jan 27th 2009

Started by Some Guy, January 27, 2010, 03:45:29 PM

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Acco

Well, I'm going to revise my stance on the entire "tablet" thing... friend and I discussed it and, well... there are some very interesting possibilities for such a device. Not necessarily the apple slate, but...

Imagine a hospital where every doctor, every nurse, every medical staff member was issued a slate tablet as such. Let's also imagine that these slates actually have styluses (the digital keyboard is still a bunch of fail, as far as I'm concerned). Digital charting would be a very definite possibility. Just have an xray performed? Upload the image to the hospital's mainframe/patient files, and be able to see it anywhere within the hospital on any of these slate type devices. Adjusting a dose for a patient? Just note it in the patient chart, the nurses will get the information immediately, as well as the pharmacists. Medical students + operating theatre? Ditch the observation room, use cameras to stream the operation and monitors as necessary. Need to check on a reading from a patient? Heart rate or whatnot? Access that from your slate while having coffee.

I think that there are some very big possibilities with these slate-like computing devices. They don't necessarily have to be apple's... but theoretically, it COULD be done with them. While the device itself may not have use to us consumers, I'm sure that there are applications that we haven't thought of yet that might be very cool and come into use in the next few years.

Vanilla Skunk

Quote from: Drake Wingfire on January 30, 2010, 10:35:04 PM
the Ipad is just one of those dead-end gadgets, like the N-gage or the Virtual-boy....

Umm... I hate to break it to you, but N-Gage is very much alive to this day.  You can still buy games for it, including games that are recently being released on Steam and such.

Drake Wingfire

Quote from: Felix McKline on January 31, 2010, 01:15:35 PM
Quote from: Drake Wingfire on January 30, 2010, 10:35:04 PM
the Ipad is just one of those dead-end gadgets, like the N-gage or the Virtual-boy....

Umm... I hate to break it to you, but N-Gage is very much alive to this day.  You can still buy games for it, including games that are recently being released on Steam and such.

Well that may be so, I meant that in the context that it was one of those devices that was suppose to hit it big, even while its still around, it ultimately was a flop in that it was too much of a "radical" change of technology to ever really have market longevity.

The Ipad is just one of those things thats gonna be too different to ever become a main-steam must-have item.

Acco

Keep in mind that the original n-gage was a criticized as being a poorly designed phone. Hence why it never really got mass market appeal. Plus there was never any good software support.

I'll still never buy an ipad without a stylus... but I'm sure that apple will make it a reasonably successful product.

Drake Wingfire

Quote from: Accophox on January 31, 2010, 02:50:58 AM
Well, I'm going to revise my stance on the entire "tablet" thing... friend and I discussed it and, well... there are some very interesting possibilities for such a device. Not necessarily the apple slate, but...

Imagine a hospital where every doctor, every nurse, every medical staff member was issued a slate tablet as such. Let's also imagine that these slates actually have styluses (the digital keyboard is still a bunch of fail, as far as I'm concerned). Digital charting would be a very definite possibility. Just have an xray performed? Upload the image to the hospital's mainframe/patient files, and be able to see it anywhere within the hospital on any of these slate type devices. Adjusting a dose for a patient? Just note it in the patient chart, the nurses will get the information immediately, as well as the pharmacists. Medical students + operating theatre? Ditch the observation room, use cameras to stream the operation and monitors as necessary. Need to check on a reading from a patient? Heart rate or whatnot? Access that from your slate while having coffee.

I think that there are some very big possibilities with these slate-like computing devices. They don't necessarily have to be apple's... but theoretically, it COULD be done with them. While the device itself may not have use to us consumers, I'm sure that there are applications that we haven't thought of yet that might be very cool and come into use in the next few years.

I can agree there, on a commercial level such a device could have real potential like you described, though the beauty of it would be simply because it was replacing something unwieldy and old anyhow like a writing board or a massive book. That would have been a way better market spin compared to the "here is the future PC!" way they are trying for now.

Acco

No, the beauty of it is because you're connected to your patients everywhere in the hospital. You have access to all your patient records everywhere in the hospital. Your patient stats improve? You get an immediate notification of that. S/he crashes? You're notified immediately and see exactly what they did. Hell, you're connected at home through a VPN over 3G and can get information about this stuff as it happens. You get the surgeon's notes immediately after an operation. Etc.

Ember

#36
Quote from: Accophox on February 02, 2010, 01:02:04 AM
No, the beauty of it is because you're connected to your patients everywhere in the hospital. You have access to all your patient records everywhere in the hospital. Your patient stats improve? You get an immediate notification of that. S/he crashes? You're notified immediately and see exactly what they did. Hell, you're connected at home through a VPN over 3G and can get information about this stuff as it happens. You get the surgeon's notes immediately after an operation. Etc.

The tech for this has been around for years and years with no implementation as you've described.

There's no reason they had to wait for a tablet to make this tech work. Most of the hospital systems are still DOS based programs that are some 15 years old.

What you're excited for has absolutely nothing to do with the tablet, and has to do with a system that modern health care absolutely refuses to impliment.


(also all those tablets would be throwing off signals which would wreck havoc with delicate machines, which is why many parts of hospitals you can't even have a cell phone on)

Silvermink

Quote from: Accophox on January 31, 2010, 02:50:58 AMImagine a hospital where every doctor, every nurse, every medical staff member was issued a slate tablet as such. Let's also imagine that these slates actually have styluses (the digital keyboard is still a bunch of fail, as far as I'm concerned). Digital charting would be a very definite possibility. Just have an xray performed? Upload the image to the hospital's mainframe/patient files, and be able to see it anywhere within the hospital on any of these slate type devices. Adjusting a dose for a patient? Just note it in the patient chart, the nurses will get the information immediately, as well as the pharmacists. Medical students + operating theatre? Ditch the observation room, use cameras to stream the operation and monitors as necessary. Need to check on a reading from a patient? Heart rate or whatnot? Access that from your slate while having coffee.

That'd be awesome if (as Ember says) you could find a way to do that without interfering with sensitive medical equipment, which isn't something hospitals are going to want to flirt with.

Vanilla Skunk

Medical equipment isn't so sensitive these days.

I was just in the hospital on Sunday, getting my thumb stitched up, and the doctor was texting in the emergency room.  So, I pulled out my phone and did the same, while he was stitching me up.

Acco

#39
Yeah, they really don't give a shit about cellphones nowaday. :)

edit: they also never had the opportunity to do it for as cheaply as they do now.

Vanilla Skunk

Careful with that swearing, d00d... you could've gotten banned for a day a few weeks ago. :P

Unition

Quote from: Ember on February 02, 2010, 01:55:33 AM
Quote from: Accophox on February 02, 2010, 01:02:04 AM
No, the beauty of it is because you're connected to your patients everywhere in the hospital. You have access to all your patient records everywhere in the hospital. Your patient stats improve? You get an immediate notification of that. S/he crashes? You're notified immediately and see exactly what they did. Hell, you're connected at home through a VPN over 3G and can get information about this stuff as it happens. You get the surgeon's notes immediately after an operation. Etc.

The tech for this has been around for years and years with no implementation as you've described.

There's no reason they had to wait for a tablet to make this tech work. Most of the hospital systems are still DOS based programs that are some 15 years old.

What you're excited for has absolutely nothing to do with the tablet, and has to do with a system that modern health care absolutely refuses to impliment.


(also all those tablets would be throwing off signals which would wreck havoc with delicate machines, which is why many parts of hospitals you can't even have a cell phone on)

Ironically, I just finished moving a legacy system to a webapp last week!  Most hospital applications are webapps (run in Internet Explorer) because they will run on pretty much any computer, anywhere, no installation required.

There's no need for handheld tablets because everyone in the room can look up at the 32" LCD screen in the corner.  Also, nurses can yell faster than it would take to press buttons on a pad.

Doctors would lose them in about 2 seconds.

Vanilla Skunk

I can just imagine playing one of those games where you tilt the thing...  since it's so big...

Acco

#43
Just a fyi for any of you guys that are actually planning on spending money on a tablet: know that there are more options... that may be significantly better in many regards. :)

It's battery life is between double and 20x that of the apple tablet. It's cheaper than the apple tablet (by 200 bucks). It's built on the android 2.1 platform. And it's got a matte screen.

ipad killer? possibly.

edit: I just realized, I never tossed in the name -- Notion Ink Adam

Vanilla Skunk