iPads have found a solid niche in health care

Apple has been talking a lot lately about the usefulness of the iPad in vertical markets, and the health care vertical might benefit from the device most of all. iPads are already very popular with physicians, who use them for everything from viewing medical images to entering notes in an electronic patient record (EHR).

At VentureBeat’s HealthBeat conference Tuesday, Drchrono‘s Daniel Kivatinos, Direct Dermatology’s Dr. Angela Walker, and Michelle Snyder discussed the use of mobile technology like the iPad and Google Glass in medicine.

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The iPad in particular has had a huge impact on medical practices because it can be used for tasks typically reserved for desktop computers. In fact, Drchrono’s EHR product is designed from the bottom up for mobile use.

“When we first started Drchrono, I think we did a lot of testing and we wanted to see what doctors would actually use in their practice,” Kivatinos said. When Drchrono was founded in 2009, the iPad wasn’t even around yet. But doctors gravitated toward the device after it launched in 2010, and Drchrono launched its iPad app in 2011.

Direct Dermatology’s Walker, a dermatologist, added that she didn’t fully adopt the iPad in her practice until the iPad mini came out. She liked how it fit in her white coat’s pocket.

As Welltok’s Snyder pointed out at the beginning of the talk, Drchrono was the first to incorporate mobile payments into an EHR and the first to create an EHR app for Google Glass.

Questions still remain around the use of Google Glass in the medical field. Privacy is one important issue given Glass’s ability to record video and voice. But Kivatinos pointed out that quickly pressing Glass’s record button to capture a particular part of a patient visit could be very helpful for both the doctor and the patient.

Google Glass might also be very useful in patient education, Walker said. “[surgery is] a discipline where doctors’ hands might be busy a lot and Glass can be helpful . . . In any setting where your hands are tied, it can be useful.”

Overall, one thing is clear: Mobile devices are changing the way doctors run their practices.