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iPad: The New 'Scalpel' and 'Eyes' of the Operating Room

Decent Essays

It’s no secret that technology is constantly evolving behind the elusive doors of this nation’s operating rooms. In order to provide the best possible care to achieve the most desirable outcomes for increasingly complex medical disparities, physicians are continuously attempting to predict future needs of patients and of course, medical technology. Following the unveiling of Apple’s iPhone and iPad, pioneering physicians at teaching hospitals instituted the use of such mobile assistive devices for the purpose of gaining access to patient health records from any location within the hospital versus on-unit with the traditional paper chart. Next began the use of the iPad at bedside for the purposes of patient teaching, instant access to medical records, and point-of-care documentation. It is the aforementioned that peaked curiosity about the full potential of the iPad in a surgical setting, particularly the operating room. With the proper medical app, similar to software written for computers, the iPad could generate previous patient imaging-CT scans, PET scans, and MRIs- with the convenience of portability, faster accessibility, and a sleek, compact design (Wodajo 20-21). A marked upgrade to the bulky, slower-to-process desktop, the iPad would be the newest, state-of-the-art assistive device to make it through the double doors of operating theaters everywhere since the inception of the Da Vinci Robot, laparoscopy, and digital screens for imaging display. As with the

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