How Do Librarians Use iPads

This week (and part of next) I am in jury duty.  Thankfully the jury pool room has free wifi so I have been able to keep up with the online world a bit (If my laptop battery lasts, there are precious few electrical outlets). 

This morning I received an email from another librarian asking me how I use an iPad as a librarian.  Well, I don’t have an iPad.  I am saving up for one when the iPad 3 comes out.  So a lot of the ways I would use an iPad are still just guesses for me. 

So I posted the question on the iMedicalApps forum, “How Do Librarians Use iPads.”  My hope is that librarians with iPads will answer how they use their iPad in the job and how it is a better tool or solves a need that previous tools (laptops, desktops, smartphones, etc.) didn’t.

Siri Can Be An Expensive Assistant

Note: I am on jury duty this week.  Depending on if I am called or not, there may or may not be more posts for the rest of the week and into next week.

If you aren’t grandfathered into Verizon’s or AT&T’s unlimited data plans and you don’t have Sprint, you just might want to think twice before you ask your favorite iPhone assistant, Siri, to look something up or read that text for you.  According to several reports, iPhone 4S users use almost twice as much data as users of the iPhone 4.  The culprit it seems is Siri.  According to this Forbes article (and others), every time you ask Siri a question or tell Siri to do something it has to send your voice commands to Apple’s servers to understand what you are saying.  So even if you are asking it to play a song on your phone that is in your library, Siri has to go out to Apple’s servers to understand your command just to play that song. 

So as fun as Siri might be, you might want to limit your use depending your data plan and whether you are on wifi or not.

Hospitals Slow on Tablet Implementation

I saw this article, “Hospitals slow on tablet implementation,” last week and posted it right away on my Facebook account with the intention of blogging about it the next day.  Sigh… that was before round two (or is it three now) of sick kids. 

Several things flitted through my mind when I first read the title:

  • Wow, Apple’s Tim Cook was a little off on his estimate that 80% of top hospitals were testing the iPad.
  • Ok, looks like my hospital and I are not in the minority as it sometimes felt.
  • Yep, same ol’ same ol’. By the time we adopt the new technology it is out of date

But after those thoughts and others left I began to wonder what is the real hold up. It can’t be that 99% of all hospitals have the same draconian IT policies. (Although my conspiracy theory friends might disagree.) Why does it seem that U.S. hospital have such wonderful advance cutting edge technologies for diagnosing and treating diseases, but when it comes to computer infrastructure, hospitals cannot keep up with technology. 

So I began to look around the web to find out if anybody commented on Sarah Jackson’s post at Fierce Mobile Healthcare as to why so few hospital have done fully functional tablet systems.

Both Jenny Gold of Kaiser Health News and iMedicalApps approach the problem from the app side of things.  Gold’s article blames the EMR companies that often don’t have apps for their software, thereby forcing hospitals to use third party apps like Citrix or VMware which can be clunky and slow.  Satish Misra at iMedicalApps points out that even apps created by EMR companies like Epic, Centricity, and Allscripts require make their EMR apps read only making it a necessity for doctors to log on to a separate computer to make notes in the chart.  To add to the “fun” many of these EMR companies like Epic and Allscripts require separate licensing for their mobile platforms.  (Hmm that little caveat sounds familiar to librarians.)  So what you have is all these hospitals who have spend LOTS of time and money getting themselves and EMR product and now enters a game changing product that was never envisioned 5 years ago when many hospitals were well into their EMR planning and implementation. 

While EMR integration is important there are many doctors who are using the iPad without that ability.  They are using them in the exam room, ER, Surgery, and especially in radiology.  According to Robert McMillan of Wired, Apple has a secret plan to steal your doctor’s heart.  His name is Afshad Mistri.  (Although I am not sure how secret he can be when Wired does a big article on him and he is organizing invitation only conferences for medical professionals.)  His goal (and Apple’s) is to get the iPad in the hands doctors.  McMillan reports that it was Mistri who launched the special iTunes room for healthcare in September, and promoted it to a select group of healthcare app developers.  Apple has to be careful promoting the iPad in hospitals.  Step too far one way and the FDA will want to regulate it as a medical device, but don’t step at all and you don’t get it in the hands of doctors.   The Wired article is a very interesting read and highly recommend it because it does a good job of illustrating just how Apple, a consumer oriented company not a company usually interested in businesses, is delicately trying to work its way into healthcare, specifically hospitals. 

As much as Apple has secret fingers in the pie, trying to hook docs to the iPad, don’t forget that there are still signal issues within most hospitals.  This is a big barrier to implementation.  You can have all the best apps and EMR integration but if you are in a deadzone, you have an expensive brick.  Ravi Nerella posted in the iMedicalApps forum, “We had issues with reception throughout our hospital (the ED was a dead zone) until one of the major cellphone carriers was allowed to place a tower or repeater (whatever it is they needed) and now we have great reception (for the specific carrier only of course) that also forced us to go with the specific carrier to provide us service.” 

Just from a quick look through the Internet it seems that there is a host of reasons why 99% of the hospitals don’t have fully functional tablet systems. But from my perspective it seems to basically comes down to money (doesn’t everything).  It takes some serious cash to license the app (3rd party or from the EMR company), some apps aren’t even fully functional so you aren’t saving on hardware costs by chucking the PCs.   It also costs a lot of money to support the product and write hospital specific apps.  Additionally they have to spend money on the infrastructure, making dead zones viable.  If something wasn’t put in the budget and it is that costly to implement, it is going to take quite a while (years maybe?) to implement.  The iPad is less than 2 years old.  It wasn’t even a glimmer in budget lines back then.   The speed of personal day to day technology has outpaced hospital budget planning processes.  Quite simply, hospitals are giant cruise ships that can’t turn on a dime when the iceberg of new technology comes into sight.  Let’s just hope most hospitals are not the Titanic.

Medical Librarians Forum for Apps and Mobile Devices

Last week I wrote a post  about iMedicalApps launching a forum to foster the discussion of medical apps.  Well I am announcing the launch of the Medical Librarian’s Corner, an area within iMedicalApps Forum dedicated to librarians discussing the use of apps, mobile devices, licensing, support, teaching, etc.

The people at iMedicalApps noticed that a medical librarians help play an important part in the “distribution of knoweledge and useful resources” and can provide help to medical professionals dealing with information overload.  So they created a specific corner of the forum (of which I am the moderator) for medical librarians to discuss everything and anything related to apps and mobile devices. 

New to smartphones and apps, or are you an old pro?  The forum will provide a great place for newbies and veterans to discuss and post questions.  So if you are interested, create an account, login and start discussing.  It is my hope that this can be a robust and helpful area for medical librarians.

Since a blank forum is a little bit like the blank page in the typewriter staring back at you, I have already started a discussion thread.  What libraries have the best list of apps and mobile friendly websites?  However, if you have something else that is on your mind, please feel free to post it.  The only way this forum can be of help is if people participate. 

 

Chrome is Winning the Browser War?

According to this Mashable post, “Internet Explorer Still on Top, but Chrome is Winning the Browser War.”  Huh?! Even though IE is still the most popular browser, it has lost “a lot” of market share in 2011 to Google Chrome.   Mashable quotes StatCounter’s 2011 data which states IE has 39% market share, Chrome has 27% and Firefox has 25%.  Safari at 6% and Opera at 2% bring up the rear. 

The numbers are impressive but what is more impressive to Mashable (and I agree) is the amount IE and Firefox both lost to Chrome.  In the beginning of 2011 IE had 46% and Firefox “was over 30%” of the market.  Both browsers lost a chunk of users who went to Chrome, thus making it the number 2 browser in the beginning of 2012.

I live in an IE bubble.  Work only supports IE.  Getting them to upgrade to the next IE standard is a monumental hurdle in itself, let alone having Firefox or Chrome installed.  Because work only supports IE, I tend to use IE on my personal laptop.  So, I had no idea that Chrome was this popular.  Why? 

Preston Gralla at ComputerWorld attributes Chrome’s rise and IE’s decline to smartphones. 

“Safari is the default browser for iOS, and Chrome is the default for Android. (Actually, the Android browser isn’t exactly precise Google code, but it’s close enough, and syncs with the computer versions of Chrome, for example.)”

Preston writes for ComputerWorld and is much smarter than me in the ways of computers, but I don’t think it is all due to smartphone usage. If it were then Safari would have more than a measly 6%.  Now I realize Android has a larger market share (around 45%) but the next most popular smartphone is Apple with 28% share, yet its browser Firefox has only a 6% market share?!  I would think it would be bigger than that.

Sam Diaz at ZDNet believes Chromes rise up the ranks is due to little bits of things here and there as well as better market awarness.

“Is it browser performance? Is it speed? Maybe it’s the fact that Apple continues to sell Macs – which don’t support IE – to former Windows users. My guess is that it’s a combination of the above, as well as many other factors, including general awareness.”

Whatever the reason, I don’t see hospital IT departments adopting Chrome (or anything not IE) any time too soon.  So if the majority of your medical library users are internal (i.e. they are coming from the hospital computers and Intranet) I wouldn’t be too concerned about Chrome for a while.  But if you tend to get a lot of external users through VPN or another secure method you might need to keep a close eye on your usage statistics to see what browsers your users are using.  If Chrome has as big of a usage base as StatCounter says, this might effect how your ILS or your off campus authentications systems work/display.

An End to My Android and Virgin Mobile Experiment

My experiment with Virgin Mobile and Android has come to an end a bit earlier than I expected.  My Motorola Triumph came to an unexpected demise over Christmas.  It was mostly my fault but my husband thinks that the Christmas elves had something to do with it.  I plugged my phone into the outlet next to my bed at my sister’s house.  The charging cord did not reach to the end table so I put the phone on the floor next to the wall.  When my sister put a comforter on the bed she accidentally stepped on the phone cracking the screen.  The phone technically worked but I could only see about a 1 inch width of the screen down the length of the phone.  That seriously limited my smartphone usage. 

Tired of hearing my complaints about my phone prior to being stepped on, (camera constantly failed, ringer unexpectantly went silent or loud despite my settings, it rebooted whenever, etc.) my husband declared that my Christmas present would be an iPhone 4s and I just had to pick the carrier.  (I secretly wonder if my husband was in cahoots with my sister.)

After comparing the apples, oranges, and grapes of mobile service plans among AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, that there is no concensus as to which mobile provider is better.  There are almost an equal number of people who love/hate AT&T as they do Verizon and Sprint. I also learned several other things during this time.  First, I don’t hate Androids. I simply like iPhones better because I like the simplicity and overall user experience with them.  Androids have much more flexibility but I don’t want/need that.  Additionally because there are many Android manufacturers there is wide varience in the product.  I don’t know whether my Triumph was a lemon or all Triumphs are crummy devices, but it didn’t perform as I think it should have. If I have an iPhone I don’t have worry about that type of variance.  Second, Virgin Mobile is a great way to get the smartphone experience at a fraction of the smartphone cost (compared to AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint).  Its network is limited but if you live within the network, it isn’t too bad for the price.  While I am not on Virgin Mobile any more, my husband still is and he is happy.  He has 300 min. of talk, unlimited data, and unlimited texting for $25/month.  If that plan suits you, you cannot beat that price. Things get a little more expensive and the differences between VM and the big 3 begin to get closer as you get more voice minutes. I was at 1200 min. of talk, unlimited data, and unlimited texting for $45/month.  I will be paying $65 to AT&T for 900 min. of talk, 2G of data. I won’t have  texting plan but I’m not a heavy texter so I will see how I do at .20 cent a minute.  In the past I have observed my data usage and I hover around 800MB to 1.3G.  So while I will be technically getting less stuff from AT&T, I am getting what I need at only $20 more than VM. To me $20 more is worth having the iPhone after having spent time with my lemon droid.

I considered Verizon, but the service cost more than AT&T and I really like the ability to surf and talk at the same time.  So now begins my adventure with discovering my new 4s phone.  I am glad that I decided to try things with Android and Virgin Mobile.  I am now very comfortable helping users with their Androids as well as those who have iPhones.  I enjoyed discovering the different apps and ways to make things different.  The nice thing is that my husband still has an Android, and I can always “test” things on his phone to see how things work compared to the iPhone. 

So even though I am back to the iPhone, I wouldn’t say this experiment was a total loss.  I became quite familiar with another mobile platform and learned a lot of things in the process.  Androids (perhaps not the Motorola Triumph) offer a great smartphone experience.  You are not “losing” anything by not having an iPhone.

Friday Fun: 25 Most Beautiful College Libraries

Flavorwire wrote a post listing the 25 Most Beautiful College Libraries of the World.  The list was originally posted on December 13th and I found it on the 20th, but I had to hold it post it on this Friday’s Fun Post because the bookmas tree post clearly trumped beautiful college libraries on the Friday before Christmas.

Unfortunately, I have only been to one of the 25 libraries listed, The Long Room at Trinity College Library in Dublin Ireland.  I don’t think Flavorwire’s picture of the Long Room is all that great, so here is a better one I found.  Of course the picture doesn’t compare to being there.

Not many libraries are so cool that they “become one with the Force.”

While I understand Flavorwire’s need to limit the list to just academic libraries, but there are a lot of other beautiful libraries out there. 

One of my favorite libraries is the Cerritos Public Library.  Below is a picture of the children’s section taken by Adam Tow.  

The place is phenomenal visually.  Take a look at more of the library from other pictures around the library on the Cerritos Public Library Interior Photos.

What are some cool/beautiful libraries that you have seen?

 

Tech Trends for 2012

Out with old and in with the new.  The Cornflower has posted a nice article on Tech Trends for 2012 based off of what Jason Hiner at Tech Republic and Pete Cashmore of Mashable believe to be trending for the new year.

Here is my Tech Trends for 2012 as it relates to medical libraries:

1. RIM will go out of business or get bought. Blackberrys will go the way of Palm Pilot. Hospital IT departments will be forced to address the iPhone and Android issue.  Of course given the speed at which IT departments have upgraded from IE 6, who knows how long they can delay the inevitable.  (This may not happen exactly in 2012 but it isn’t just my crazy dream either.  It is well documented that RIMs stock is down, the Blackberry has 17% market share, and its PlayBooks are not selling.)

2.Librarians will shift more money toward Patron Driven Aquisition of books.  I don’t see us at the point where our entire book budget is totally PDA, but more and more libraries are experimenting and I think they will be finding it to be a successful method of providing ebooks that they will look to expand it.

3. Facebook will lose its luster with librarians.  The push to put the library on Facebook to connect with users will die out for most.  Only a select few successful libraries with a highly engaged user base will continue. The others will peter out and like the dead blogs of yesteryear will go unupdated and unused haunting the web.

4. Augmented reality will be used more often in the stacks.  Specifically it will be used to highlight libraries digital repositories and online books and journals.  For example somebody browsing the cardiology section of the stacks will be able to see a list of online books and journals, images, sounds, etc. specific to that subject area.  If they move to the nursing section of the stacks they will see the virtual nursing collection.  (This is still kind of an “out there” idea. Notice I didn’t say this would be done by every library in the world, I just think you start to see some libraries doing more experiments with it.)

5. This will be the year of the smartphone.  When my mother says that she is feeling pressure (not from her children but from society) to upgrade to a smartphone, you know that it has hit the masses in a big way.  As a result we will be seeing a whole new user group.  This user group are the late adopters and they may not be as tech savvy as the early adopters who have had smartphones for a while.  This group will be excited about their new phone but also may need some hand holding as they get accustomed to all of the things that the early adopters now take for granted.

What do you predict for 2012?  Tech or non-tech what do you think will be impacting medical libraries?

Medical Apps Forum

So you got a new smartphone for Christmas and the first thing you want to do is start loading and trying out all these apps you keep hearing about.  Well it might interest you to do know that iMedicalApps has just launched a new medical apps forum for the medical community to discuss mobile apps and technology. 

Not only will there be general discussions about various apps but they will have specialty areas for people to discuss specific issues without the post getting lost or  bogged down in the general discussion area. In addition the editors and writers on iMedicalApps will be answering questions about mobile technology in the forum.

iMedicalApps is a great resource for reading articles about medical apps for smartphones, hopefully the forum can take that information and extend it and keep it current and practical.  I’ve registered and will be either lurking or posting or combination of the two, it will be interesting to see how it evolves.  Unfortunately they didn’t have librarian as a choice for profession.  Kind of bummed on that.