Survey
Will Healthcare Providers Shun or Embrace the iPad – Conflicting Surveys Send Mixed Messages [Updated]
Updated! This post has been updated below to include comments from the folks at Epocrates
The excitement and hype surrounding the announcement of Apple’s iPad have subsided for the time being, perhaps just a lull prior to the actual release in a few months. Here at iMedicalApps, we were certainly among the many believers and expected that the iPad could make significant contributions to healthcare, such as potentially replacing the physician’s clipboard or medical textbooks.
However, we did disagree at times on the extent to which the iPad could penetrate the healthcare market, for a variety of reasons. The folks over at Software Advice decided to try to get a feel for what the community at large was thinking through an interesting survey they performed. And for Apple, the results of this survey aren’t encouraging – if you believe the results.
Having spent nearly four years learning how to read medical literature, I decided to try to get a better sense of just how valid these results are especially considering the seemingly conflicting results of the Epocrates survey. Chris Thorman, who authored the article on the survey, was kind enough to correspond with me on details of the survey methodology. Here’s a look at the results and our take on what they really mean.


