April 1st, 2010

The iPad will come to health IT slowly

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 9:05 am

Categories: Finance, General, Hospital IT, IT Management, Medical IT, Medical Office IT, Medical Records, Physician Information, himss 2011

Tags: Information Technology, Health Care, Strategy, Management, Dana Blankenhorn

Last month???s HIMSS health IT show in Atlanta was a who???s who of the technology industry.

Google was there. Hewlett-Packard was there. Dell was there. Microsoft was all over it.

Notice who was missing? Apple.

But maybe not next year, when the show returns to Orlando. Home of Walt Disney World. And you know who the biggest shareholder in Disney is, don???t you? Steve Jobs.

April Fool snark aside, Kleiner Perkins has already put together a $200 million ???iFund??? for building iPad applications. Health care is a particular focus, according to the venture fund???s press statement.

There are already a ton of iPhone health apps out there. Our friend Larry Magid???s claim that ???Apple is entering the health insurance business??? was an April Fool???s joke, but there are many applications for the iPhone already that work for doctors and medical researchers.

That is the tip of a very large iceberg. I called medicine the iPad sweet spot in January and a lot of good comments followed. I still suspect I was right.

I was enthusiastic because the iPad has, when placed in a leather case, superior look-and-feel to today???s paper charts, because the base $500 price point is awfully compelling, and because I assumed fitting Electronic Health Record (EHR) software to it should be a snap.

It wouldn???t have to go to market directly through Apple, but will likely be offered by EHR vendors, at little or no cost, or by hospitals trying to increase doctor compliance with EHR needs, as part of training. It only needs to interface with an existing infrastructure.

All of which means that Apple may not even need a booth in Orlando to be one of the big winners at next year???s HIMSS show.

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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

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