iPads and Health Care—Health IT Managers Slow Down Physicians' Clinical Adoption

Doctors are using iPads in huge numbers for personal life project management. 80% of doctors are excited about using them in clinical practice. But when it comes to clinical applications, don’t confuse physicians’ desire for mobility with their current use of iPads in everyday practice.

What’s surprising is the “why” behind that phenomenon. It’s not a lack of desire; to a large extent, it’s a hospital-based system that’s not listening to physician demand for seamless mobility that fits with real-life workflow.

This was the light-bulb-over-the-head finding of Gregg Malkary of Spyglass Consulting. Gregg recently complete 100 in-depth interviews with switched-on doctors to assess their views on iPads and tablet computing in clinical practice.

I spent an hour with Gregg on the phone yesterday getting into the nitty-gritty of his qualitative research. “Doctors are going mobile,” Gregg said, “But hospital IT doesn’t see the physician as their client and they want to play by the old paradigm – ‘we’ll tell you what we’ll provide, and you’ll adopt it.”...