White coat, stethoscope, … iPad?

Medical students at Yale got some new standard-issue equipment this fall: free iPads. Deputy dean Richard Belitsky says the tablet computers, preloaded with the curriculum, will have all kinds of uses in classroom and clinical settings. They will also resolve a thorny issue involving patient privacy. After a laptop containing protected health information (ePHI) was stolen last year, the med school required all students to turn over their personal computers this spring so security software could be installed. But students objected. The software, many said, violated their privacy, stripped them of administrative privileges on their own computers, and made their systems unstable. Belitsky says the plan to issue iPads was already in the works, so it made for an effective solution: students may review and update ePHI only on the tablets. Daniel Okin ’14MD/PhD says that while some students doing research on patient data will need more computing power, the iPads will solve the security problem for most students.