“The election promise was made last week by Victorian Premier John Brumby as part of Labor’s wide-ranging state health policy released ahead of the upcoming Victorian election,” LeMay reports. “The Coalition has made a similar promise, but without specifically mentioning the iPad as a targeted device. Analyst firm Gartner has questioned whether Victoria’s Labor Party had properly analysed what management tools and supporting infrastructure it will need if it wins the election and is required to deliver on the promise.”
LeMay reports, “iSoft director of markets and solutions Byron Phillips said it was ‘hard to deny’ the organic uptake of the iPad by clinicians over the past six months since the tablet was released in Australia, describing adoption of the device by many sectors and the consumer market in general as ‘immense.’ Product tracking firm GfK Australia recently released new research purporting to show that around 188,000 tablet devices had been sold in Australia over the past six months, with almost all of those sales being iPads.”
Read more in the full article here.
Forgive my ignorance, but can you have password-protected user accounts on a iPad? I presume you can have programs that are password protected.
@ bezoar,
You would think that when you are in a Hospital you would want everyone there to have access to your medical records as soon as possible.
The last thing you’d want is someone looking for a password while you redline.
If iPad is anything like iTouch (properly called iPod touch, but I gave up on that one months ago…), then there ARE no individual user accounts on it (yet). It does allow you to set up a power-on/wake-up password, if you need to control access to the device.
@Big Als MBP
Flatline? Funny picture though. “Oops! Dang, I thought the asterisk came at the end! Note the time of death, nurse.”
Big Als MBP,
I was thinking more along the lines of patient confidentiality (HIPAA in the USA). If a doctor leaves an iPad on a counter by accident, someone else should NOT be able to pick it up and have access to personal data, change information, write orders, etc.
Also, unless the entire patient’s chart there on the floor is electronic, the nurses should have access to the patient’s diagnoses, medications, and such. The docs and nurses are supposed to already know how to respond to the ‘lines’, no matter their color or shape.
If there are no PW-protected user accounts, then its just a level of protection that the record system would have to provide.
But how hard could it be to have user accounts for the iPad? Aren’t there some system preferences that could be set to each user?
The password protection happens at the backend. 802.11n everywhere in the hospital. There is a myth going around that some medical devices don’t go ping unless you turn off your phone. Sensitive devices just need to be in Faraday cages.
Over in Austrailia, where they didn’t go batshit crazy when they reformed healthcare YEARS AGO, technology marches on, outcomes are better & life expectancy continues to rise.
Over here in Ammurrika ( we’re #1- not ), even modest reform of the most expensive, disjointed and ineffective healthcare system brought the crazy out in unprecedented numbers.
This isn’t conjecture- it is the plain & simple truth. Most American clinics & hospitals cannot afford to do this without government help & that ain’t gonna happen when the teabagger House & Speaker BONER come to power.
The 20th was the American Century. The 21st not so much.
@Socialists! OMFG
Funny handle in this particular case, as the state of Victoria is THE bastion of the Australian Labour party and its proletariat caucus.
@socialists! OMFG
Although I agree with your sentiments, let’s not get into politics here? Please? Let’s just admit Australia is awesome.
Hey doofus, ever think that “most American clinics & hospitals cannot afford to do this without government help” is precisely because GOVERNMENT HAD INTERVENED labeled as help in the form of rules and regulations and what not! Kind of like that Obama shit head philosophy of spread the wealth was no where to be found, before it was reformed by Speaker Newt, when some liberal loser on welfare looking for the government welfare handout finally finds a job and then makes too much for welfare but not enough to live on thanks to the brilliant politicians in Washington sucking away at the tit of the American taxpayer, so where does that leave them? You Progressive P*ssy! And it’s ‘Majority Leader Elect House Speaker’ Boner, ‘House & Speaker’ – can’t you losers get anything right?! What a dumbass! This ‘effen “Teabagger” as you and your MSNBC brain dead bretheren like to define, says suck the big one you Socialist POS! Move to Australia and let us know when your lying on your deathbed and being debated by their death panel, remind us just how great their gov’t health care is!
The point here is that the ipad is being used to improve on an already good medical system!
The response made at 3:50pm to “socialists! OMFG is a good case in point for why the tea baggers will go down under their own misguided and misdirected anger, say anything to one of them and just watch them explode into irrelevant verbal abuse.
I work in healthcare (Radiology) and deal with HIS, RIS & PACS everyday and have since before the days when on call FICA were reading CTs using video capture on System 7 Macs over dial up modems. Otherwise, a long time.
My opinion is informed by over 2 decades of healthcare work, so my opinion wasn’t handed to me off some opinion blog or conservative radio station.
My point is that our shitty, fragmented, private healthcare system will not be seeing this kind of technology improvement on a universal basis BECAUSE of the very fact that it is a shitty & fragmented system and the teabaggers were duped into voting the people who crashed our economy into power in the House.
Hey RE: chill out. Your rant is ridiculous and uncalled for.
The Tea (Taxed Enough Now) Party adherents are not all like that looney above. Most of us simply want a rational fiscal policy from those we send to state houses and Washington. Unfortunately all political groups have their fringe lunatics that just want to spew. Please don’t begin a debate about politics here. I just wanted to throw some cold water on that nut above.
Australia has a socialised health care system. The Australian Government and the people quite correctly believe that a civilised society looks after the sick and provides health care access to all, regardless of circumstance.
In Australia, we don’t have situations where people are bankrupted because they need medication to live a decent life if they don’t have health insurance. Our system works extremely well and is a much more efficient use of resources.
No one would argue the right to a free education, but it boggles the mind that a first world nation like the USA doesn’t believe that people also deserve affordable health care.
@ Stuart
Word.
Well said.
Not only is the the US healthcare system not very effective at covering everyone- it is by far the most expensive. It works out to over 2x more per citizen more than any country with universal coverage.
On financials alone you would think the people in the TEA Party movement would agree with Universal Coverage as it would save tremendous amounts of money even as it improved healthcare.
@Stuart – Thank you. Is Australia accepting medical refugees?
I have access to all manner of hospital databases including PACS for radiology and blood test results all seamlessly delivered to my iPad via our hospital’s Citrix based servers. Really easy, really handy and surprisingly it barely makes a dent in my 3G downloads and runs nice and fast.
The only thing faster was the response from my IT department. The head of IT emailed me back with detailed setup instructions approximately thirty seconds after my initial email.
It sure is good to have apple friendly people in high places. I suspect he will probably get promoted and moved on soon……