iPads Become Popular Among Hospital Staff

Some time ago we posted an article about shocking popularity of the iPad among physicians. Well yesterday PCWorld posted an article about first institution which is looking forward to use this device. It is a Kaweah Delta Health Care District in Visalia, California. Its director of technical services Nick Voloshin says healthcare workers need a device with a long battery life while moving from location to location, and iPad is a great choice not only for usual everyday tasks, but also for looking at EKG results, X-ray images, and for other purposes that can be easily delivered with Citrix virtual desktop. He has already bought three iPads to test it and have plans to deploy more than a hundred for hospice and health care workers, pharmacists, dietitians and nurses in a next two months.

Nick also claims iPad may also be a great replace to laptops that often waste your time on opening and turning it on and off.  With a 10-hour battery the 500$ cost looks reasonable, especially if compared to specialized touchscreen tablets that are worst $3,000 or so.

While he bought three iPads for testing, twenty doctors at Kaweah have already purchased iPads for their own needs. One of them is Dr. Roger Haley, Kidney Specialist. In an interview to local news station he said:

"This is going to make my day easier and patient safety better. Now, I don't have to find a workstation to do what I need to do; I do it right there, right then, right now."

Nick told the first attempt to buy 100 iPads at first time wasn't successful. As you may know, Apple allows ordering only two devices per customer. So he needed to make an additional call to Apple.

The Kaweah Delta Care District has five sites: main hospital, nursing facility, dialysis center, and mental health and rehab hospitals. The IT department supports 6,500 users among hospital employees. There are 350 servers in the data server. 70% are virtual.

Voloshin had an experience of delivering apps to iPhone with Citrix Receiver software, so there is no problem with analogous problem for iPad.

"We're giving users full access to a full virtual desktop. They can run anything we can run internally. Citrix allows us to have that flexibility."

The Citrix technology allows you to maintain desktop sessions through different devices (e.g. with Citrix you can switch from an iPhone to a desktop client as the need arises).