Does The iPad Actually Facilitate Better Patient Care?

Since Apple unveiled the iPad, the device has been lauded for its promise to enhance the way doctors deliver and patients engage with healthcare. Yet the results of a recent survey may be reason enough for Apple iPad boosters to seek treatment themselves.  

With 86 percent of all residents at the Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, participating (102 of 119), only 32.4 percent thought the iPad increased their efficiency in looking up results, reports and information to practice EBM (Evidence Based Medicine).

The results show a sharp difference between medicine-based residents – internal medicine, family practice, preliminary medicine/transitional year and surgical-based residents – and their surgical/obstetrics and gynecology counterparts. Only 16.7 percent of the surgical-based residents responded with “often/always,” while 38.9 percent of the medicine-based residents said they believe the iPad is beneficial to the practice of EBM.