Allscripts EHR on the iPad

July 10, 2010

With the iPad, you can use any Allscripts EHR solution via Citrix or even RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol).  While it’s nice to be able to access the full software application on the iPad, it might be easier if there there were an application developed specifically for the iPad. As you may have seen at ACE 2010 in Las Vegas, Allscripts is also working on their own iPad App for a more fluid user experience. Codenamed Project Wombat, the Allscripts iPad Application is designed exactly the way you would expect an iPad app to look.  Clean, simple, intuitive.  We’ll have to wait a little while until it comes out, so while we’re waiting, it might not hurt to configure your iPad to access your full EHR application.

Today we set up our Allscripts TouchWorks v11.1.7 Environment to allow for access by an iPad.  By downloading an App called “Citrix Receiver” and making some changes to our Citrix environment, we were successfully able to use Enterprise from the iPad.  In my experience, TouchWorks EHR works very much like you would expect it to, except on a super-light, easy to use device.  There are downsides though, one being that the iPad does not have the processing power to run Dragon Medically Speaking.  That means that if you choose not to use a v11 form, you’re stuck with a keyboard.  The soft keyboard takes up far too much real estate, so if I were to use this regularly to access the EHR, I would certainly invest in a hard keyboard docking station.  See the video below: