Emergency medicine residents first to use iPads for patient care
Loaded with required textbooks and lecture materials, the tablet computers also offer quick access to electronic medical records while on rounds.
UCI’s Department of Emergency Medicine is providing iPads to all 18 of its resident physicians as part of the School of Medicine’s plan to integrate tablet computing into the teaching and practice of medicine. The iPads are loaded with required textbooks and lecture materials, and residents can use them to quickly access patients’ electronic medical records while on rounds. Residency program director Dr. Bharath Chakravarthy believes that UCI’s emergency medicine department is the nation’s first to employ iPads and that – coupled with its innovative use of bedside ultrasound – the department is in the vanguard of emergency healthcare. “These new technologies will revolutionize clinical practice by increasing productivity and response time in a setting where every second counts,” he said. The effort is part of the innovative iMedEd Initiative, under which the School of Medicine has been the first to integrate iPads and bedside ultrasound into the medical education
curriculum.
