You Can't Coach That

The iPhone a lifesaver?

I read over at MacApper (which quoted the Wall Street Journal) that a neurovascular surgeon had credited his new iPhone with saving a patients life. It seems that the good doctor was able to check the patient’s up to date electronic medical records just prior to the operation and thus was able to change the procedure and subsequently saved the patient’s life. Apparently the records are accessed through the Safari web browser and as “everyone” knows the iPhone comes with this pre-installed. The Blackberry that the doctor previously used does not have this feature.

Now let’s back the truck up here for a moment. A neurovascular surgeon is about to perform potentially life saving/life threatening surgery and only checks the most recent medical records for the patient because his shiny new phone has internet access? Is it just me or does everyone else want their surgeon to have the latest information about their condition prior to the operation, regardless of said surgeon’s choice of mobile gadgets. How hard is it to say “Nurse, the patient’s most recent medical chart please”?

A quote from the WSJ article:

Dr. Singer, who says he performs about 450 surgeries a year, uses his iPhone to access his practice’s electronic medical-records system. Thanks to the iPhone’s browser, he is able to review patients’ X-Rays, angiograms and medical histories while in the operating room. (Click on the video to the left for a demonstration.) He was never able to do this with his BlackBerry, he says; instead, he would review a patient’s file in his office the night before a surgery.

I wonder if a patient dies over night (God forbid) would he still go ahead with the surgery - no of course not, he has his iPhone to tell him not to. *sarcastic sneer*

Let’s get a grip people - it’s a bloody phone!!!

“You can’t coach that”

Edit: This could of course be a piece of satire ala ”Man has thumbs surgically altered to use iPhone”

not to mention sanitation… My iPhone is always coated with all manners of body grease (it actually works better that way, otherwise I’d clean it more), and I shudder to think what kinds of things could migrate from it to an open patient…

Also, the real story here should be that the medical records can only be accessed via Safari?  How is that ever a good idea?

I agree with you up to a point here Coach.  I was in a high pressure job and we used gadgets to make our life easier.  I do see where you are coming from, but this does sound reasonable to me.  Doctors are very busy folks as are nurses.  If it works for them then I’m all for it.  Have a great day. 

I suppose anyway to access information that could save a person’s life is a good one, but I’d like to think my surgeon wasn’t checking my medical history just minutes before he operated on me.

The doctor could also do this with absolutely any smart phone around - check all the windows based ones that have been around for years!!! bloody hell, apple isn’t the first for this.

I love my iPhone, but the latest batch of advertisements on the Apple site are just tooo…. gee, I don’t have a word for it.  I don’t find them compelling or even particularly good.  Incredible, in its truest sense, could be on the mark.

As for a surgeon checking his patient’s records online… highly unlikely.  If the records are kept online instead of readily available in the hospital where the patient is being treated, there’s something desperately wrong with the system there.  Even if its actually true, there’s not a hospital I know which doesn’t have regular internet access for staff to research all kinds of things.  I think that story is just some kind of advertising gimmick as well.  Sorry to those who bought it.  (I’m a nurse, yes we are busy, but we NEVER go into anything without having possession of the latest info on the patient.  Getting it on the internet via phone?  Doubtful.)

hahaha people get emotionally attached to everything these days. Cars, pets.. and now iphones.

lol, what a moron, i hope the phone the phone is sanitized too, cause statistics show that many people don’t wash their hands after ‘playing’ with themselves. and most people don’t clean their phones.

why not review the records on a pc, then go sanitize yourself the way surgeons do right before surgery rather than pull out a dirty old phone?

lol, might just wake up with an STD.