I’m expecting to get a lot of messages like the email a GP friend of mine sent me this morning: “Beam me down an iPad, Scotty!”
What excited my friend was the news that Dragon Medical Mobile Solutions, based on Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search for the iPhone, will shortly become available for the iPad (and, one assumes, Windows Mobile and possibly Google Android devices). There’s a lengthy video interview here.
As faster processors start appearing in smartphones, voice recognition – and particularly those based on Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which works beautifully on the PC, and is used by more than 150,000 physicians – there are about 80 specialist vocabularies for pathology, cardiology, gastroenterology, opthalmology neurology, psychiatry, ENT etc. – is destined to become a must-have mobile application.
At the moment, however, you can’t download Dragon Dictation to Australian iPhones, possibly because the US vocabularies don’t work very well with the Australian accent. No doubt the Australian vocabularies developed by Melbourne-based Voice Perfect Systems, will eventually become available on the iPad.
But practitioners might be wise to wait before buying an iPad. According to iMedicalApps, Apple’s AppsStore will have to lift its game before the health community can adopt the new, and apparently madly popular iPad.
Following initial excitement about the potential, that blog reports, after looking at iPad medical applications, that there are ”two huge disappointments” with the iPad: many iPhone apps haven’t been updated to use the additional screen real estate on the iPad, and there just aren’t enough iPad medical apps on the market.
On the other hand, it fits easily into a white coat pocket (is there a market, perhaps for an ehealth vest?) there’s a handwriting prototype and Apple plans to have it print to network printers.
