This is the new iPad Pro. The wallpaper is artwork by one of my granddaughers. The new and larger iPad is a joy for reading, surfing, and for most all apps. Two apps can be used side by side. For example, you can have Mail on one half and the Safari browser on the other. You can adjust the split screen from 50/50 to  60/40. I am looking forward to getting the new case with keyboard and the new Apple Pencil. They should arrive next week.

I expect the iPad Pro to play a significant role in healthcare. Physicians will love it for reviewing x-rays, MRIs, and CT scans. Nurses will make great use of iPads. At Christiana Care Health System, nurses are collecting data with iPads on patient experiences. The program is called iRound. Nurses ask questions modeled after those in the federal government’s HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey, which measures patient satisfaction on hospital care. A nurse can visit the patient at bedside, ask questions, and record the answers on the iPad.

Pam Boyd, senior program manager for patient experience said, “The purpose is for us to know how we’re doing at any given time.” The questions may seem like hotelier questions: “Are we responding to call bells? Is it quiet at night?” The iRound app lets nurses notify the appropriate people if the sink is leaking or the room has not been cleaned. Nurses can pull up questions from a prior day and ask if open issues were handled. If the room hasn’t been cleaned or a sink is dripping, the nurses can send a message via the software to immediately notify someone to handle it.

Paper and clunky PCs are on the way out. Slim tablets with personalized information at nurses’ fingertips will lead to fewer errors, high quality patient care, and better patient satisfaction.