November 3rd, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Opinion
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Next week, it will be my turn to write our article for the Clinical Psychiatry News website. Over there, we try to have our writing more specifically aimed at an audience of psychiatrists. I’m going to be writing an article on Siri and the Psychiatrist….in honor of my new iPhone 4s and the “personal assistant” function named Siri. Okay, I’m obsessed. Everyday, I find new things it can help me with. Today, I asked it, “What’s the meaning of life.” What, you don’t ask your cell phone the finer existential questions? Siri answered, “All available evidence suggests chocolate.” Wow! How old is Liza Minelli? 65 years, 7 months, 20 days. Calculate a tip? No problem. Convert Celius to Fahrenheit? A cinch. And she takes dictation. “Siri, please text Patient A Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*
October 14th, 2011 by Jessie Gruman, Ph.D. in Opinion
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There is excitement in the air about how mobile phones are the breakthrough technology for changing health behavior. Last Saturday, I was convinced this must be true. In two short hours, I:
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
October 11th, 2011 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in Opinion
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Doctors love their Apple Products. Just walk into any hospital ward, and see the types of mobile devices we are using. At weekly Grand Rounds conferences, you see plenty of iPads in use. At physician meetings, the laptop of choice is often the Macbook Pro. The data backs these anecdotal examples as well.
Doctors love their Apple Products – and Steve Jobs was obviously an extension of these products, often times cited as the singular force behind these products, and it’s why physicians who love his products mourn his passing.
There are three specific reasons why :
1) Simplicity
In medicine, we deal with enough complexity. Knowing disease pathology and the mechanism of various illnesses and their treatments is a fascinating exercise, but it’s taxing. For every known in medicine, there are at least five unknowns. It’s what makes being a physician exciting, but stressful as well. We’re always on high alert – especially those of us who practice in the critical care arena.
Juxtaposed to this is Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
October 5th, 2011 by Felasfa Wodajo, M.D. in Opinion, Research
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As we discussed in the first of this two part series, mobile devices are already entering the world of the surgeon. Currently, it is mostly downloadable apps that promise to help surgeons with the informational portions of their tasks, such as tracking the cases they have done, e.g. Surgichart or helping in the consent process, e.g. Surgery Risk
While apps that are dedicated to the technical aspects of surgery, such as the excellent AO Surgery Reference, are becoming available, in the future we will see the iPad (or its brethren) actually in the operating room. Why ? Because the iPad has many characteristics that make it a great an advanced surgical instrument.
First is its small size. Every modern operating room has stacks of electronic equipment hanging from the ceiling or in large cabinets for patient monitoring and controlling in-field devices. Since the iPad already supports a bevy of standard wireless communication protocols, many of these large boxes’ functions could likely be off-loaded to an iPad with clever engineering. One immediate advantage would be that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
September 27th, 2011 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in News
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There are a variety of tools available to help Ophthalmologists with eye examinations. A new hardware and medical apps solution turns the iPhone into an ophthalmoscope. Called the iExaminer, this simple iPhone 4 peripheral connects the popular Welch Allyn PanOptic ophthalmoscope to the iPhone 4, and then a native medical app helps you perform a fundus exams and share videos and images right from the iPhone.
Two key applications for this:
1) Teaching: For medical schools that are teaching eye examinations — instead of having to look at static pictures of eye anatomy, this “live view” could be an optimal and innovative way to teach. This could also be a great way for an ophthalmology attendings to save key eye pathology that they visualize in the mobile setting for teaching purposes.
2) Use in mobile clinics: This could be a good screening tool for various eye pathology — Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
Next week, it will be my turn to write our article for the Clinical Psychiatry News website. Over there, we try to have our writing more specifically aimed at an audience of psychiatrists. I’m going to be writing an article on Siri and the Psychiatrist….in honor of my new iPhone 4s and the “personal assistant” function named Siri. Okay, I’m obsessed. Everyday, I find new things it can help me with. Today, I asked it, “What’s the meaning of life.” What, you don’t ask your cell phone the finer existential questions? Siri answered, “All available evidence suggests chocolate.” Wow! How old is Liza Minelli? 65 years, 7 months, 20 days. Calculate a tip? No problem. Convert Celius to Fahrenheit? A cinch. And she takes dictation. “Siri, please text Patient A Read more »
