The iPad has been a hot topic on MED lately. Doctors love it, and device makers are starting to pay attention. Houston Neal, with Software Advice, a company that helps businesses find software to fit their needs, has more on how the iPad is impacting EHRs. —Jamie Hartford

From Neal:

The iPad is becoming a popular hardware device in the healthcare industry. Research has shown that more and more physicians and hospitals are choosing the iPad as their tablet device. The rising popularity of the device is leading more and more electronic health record (EHR) providers to provide iPad functionality.

Of the top 10 vendors (by market share), all either provide or have announced initiatives to make their EHR software accessible via the iPad. Some of the standouts in this arena include Epic’s Canto app, Greenway Medical’s PrimeMobile app, and NextGen’s NextGen Mobile app. If the iPad continues to remain popular and become the defacto tablet choice in healthcare, look for more of the major players to announce high quality iPad functionality.

There are other options for healthcare professionals who want to use their iPads to run an EHR system. There are web-based EMRs that operate via the iPad’s Safari web browser. While many of these are ONC-ATCB certified—meaning the physicians can receive government incentives—they are not optimized for the iPad. There are also remote access EHR applications, but these also are not optimized for the iPad. These applications are essentially a mirror of the desktop versions.

There are a few native iPad EMRs—Dr. Chrono, Nimble, MediMobile, IQMax, Capzule EMR, and Medforms. These applications take full advantage of the iPad’s slick operating system and provide powerful mobile applications, such as portable medical diagrams and charts. Unfortunatelly, these systems are not ONC-ATCB certified—a sticking point for many doctors looking to transition from paper systems to electronic health record software.

For more information on iPad EMR applications, check out this guide: iPad EMR Apps | A Guide to Electronic Medical Records.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified the author.