VA CIO Trades in Laptop for iPad

Roger Baker, CIO of the Veterans Affairs Department, has traded in his laptop and is testing the iPad with up to about 200 other VA employees, mostly physicians at its medical facilities. VA will permit employees on Oct. 1 to use Apple’s iPhone and iPad to connect to the department’s network in the course of their jobs.

“The clinicians are the real focus of this. That’s where the demand is from,” he said during an Aug. 31 briefing with reporters, adding that there will be plenty of administrative folks who will use the devices. A number of the physicians testing them are at VA’s medical center in Washington, D.C., hospital, from whom he’s gotten very good feedback, Baker said. The other testers are at various facilities around the country and at department headquarters...