I moonlight in health care while I bootstrap my startup, and I've heard people touting tablet PC's for this industry for years. The few inroads that I've seen

I moonlight in health care while I bootstrap my startup, and I've heard people touting tablet PC's for this industry for years. The few inroads that I've seen that form factor make has been in our glucometers which are essentially modified Palm Pilots, and our lab technicians are now using a similar gadget to receive lab orders and scan bar codes on patient wrists while drawing lab specimens. I was in a supervisory role last winter, and I really tried to make a tablet PC work for me. In theory, the idea would be great. I could have access to all the info on all the patients and all the individual units while I wandered around. The killers were lack of battery life, spottiness of wireless connectivity and weight of the tablet. Our hospital just built a new $200 million facility, and even though the wireless connectivity is much better, we now have PC's at every bedside. (and we still generate reams of paper charts on each patient). And, our supervisors still walk around with a clipboard full of paper. I'm not buying the whole tablet PC in health care idea. Even if Apple developed it, I don't think the industry would buy it.