We’ve all seen the commercials: the catchy music paired with a montage of all the awesome things you can do with an iPad. The iPad—and Apple, in general—is all about the “wow,” the cool factor. So why wouldn’t rehab therapists use it in their clinic? We sat down with two occupational therapy clinics and asked them to share their experiences using iPads in their practice. 

Nick Roselli, OTR/L, CHT, of Nick Roselli Occupational Therapy in New York initially purchased laptops for his multiclinic practice. However, when he lost internet connectivity one day, Nick decided to use his iPad (with 3G internet connection) for that day’s patient visits and documentation. “I saw it was very user-friendly, and I could use it on the go as I visited my other clinics,” said Nick. In the case with Dynamic Rehab in Arizona, Tania Shearon, OTR/L, CHT, brought in her own iPad to use within the clinic, knowing that it would expedite her EMR documentation. “The iPad works awesome with my daily notes...much quicker,” Tania said. 

In general, Tania says the iPad is portable, fast, and easy. Nick listed similar qualities when speaking about the iPad in his clinics, emphasizing the user-friendly aspect and the ability to create quick notes. While Nick admits he’d rather use his laptop, especially for notes loading greater amounts of data, he says the iPad is just so much more mobile. The zoom feature on iPads is also a plus, too.

A healthy lifestyle is hard to achieve without accountability, and what better way to hold yourself accountable than with the latest, greatest, wifi and social-enabled gadgetry on the market? Here, fellow copywriter Erica and I break down 12 products—ranging from full wellness to just sleep—that offer super slick devices with corresponding, user-friendly management programs.

Complete Health & Wellness 

FitBit is the ultimate health and wellness monitoring system. It’s comprehensive, cohesive, and affordable. A wifi-enabled scale tracks weight, body fat percentage, and BMI, and a personal monitoring device tracks everyday steps, stairs climbed, calories burned, heart rate, and sleeping habits. Both transmit data to a personalized dashboard, accessible online and through a mobile app, where you can track meals, workouts, and share with friends on social media sites. Mind blown yet? Well, throw in a yearly membership fee and you can also get in-depth analytical reporting, personal training, peer rankings, and detailed tracking capabilities.

Jawbone UP is FitBit minus the scale, and instead of a USB-shaped clip-on monitoring device, the UP device is an inconspicuous, sleek bracelet. Me rambling on in prose about Jawbone UP is a complete disservice to their marketing. Check out their introductory video, which summarizes UP in very pretty nutshell.

As technology fanatics, we absolutely love when our Members pose questions about how they can use WebPT with other nifty products on the market right now. Case in point: the speech recognition software, Dragon. After doing a little “yay tech!” happy dance, we got to work researching this fire-breathing product and discovering best practices for PTs.

Dragon Dictation, created by software tech company Nuance, is an “easy-to-use voice recognition application that allows you to quickly speak and instantly see your text or email messages.” Dragon currently operates in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch.

While most PTs are comfortable typing their WebPT documentation, some therapists crave dictation, and with Dragon, talk-to-text lovers can swap their recorder for their iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You talk. Dragon types. All for free.

But it’s definitely not for everyone and if you’re used to a traditional dictation service this is a totally different beast. We also don’t recommend using your iPad as your practice’s only device—there isn’t a tablet out there (yet) that has enough power to optimally support WebPT on its own.

So how can you use Dragon Dictation with WebPT? We picked the brain of our resident physical therapist and WebPT Marketplace Manager, Brian Kunich, PT, OCS, COMT, to find out how he used Dragon to enhance his documentation. Here’s what I gathered from our convos:

Thank you to everyone who attended our webinar last week on "iPad use for the Physical Therapists." For those of you who couldn’t attend the webinar, we will be posting a recorded version of the presentation on our website in the near future. Each of the sessions we hosted for the webinar ended with a 15 minute Q&A period. This gave us at WebPT some valuable insight into the concerns of the modern physical therapy clinic.

We will use this space here to address any questions that may not have been answered in our iPad webinar presentation. We encourage you to ask additional questions in the comments of this post, so we may add them to this list.

Frequently Asked Questions About the iPad

How can I print from the iPad?The new iPad operating system has enabled the ability to wirelessly print. You will have to use the Apple ‘Share’ Icon to use this feature. The final option in the dropdown menu that appears should be print. See if your printer is ‘Airprint’ capable here.

Do I have to install extra security measures to use the iPad in the healthcare situations?
WebPT is an encrypted application that has built in security measures. The iPad will not undermine any of the security features we have in place. I would suggest setting up a password protected wireless network as well as a password lock on the iPad itself.

Does Dragon Voice Recognition Software work with the iPad?
Nuance Communication has created an iPad app for the Dragon Naturally Speaking Software. Our members who use it gave us some good feedback on its efficiency in healthcare applications. Follow this link to learn more about Dragon software.