I don`t know if the Ipad will do much to save the dying newspaper and print industry, but I`ve been dreaming of it for about two years and hoping someone will be able to come up with an App that could revolutionalize the way we do things in the health-social services related industry that I work in.

I`m a group home worker. I work with intellectually challenged adults some of whom have a dual diagnoses of psychiatric

problems and some have physical or chronic medical problems as well. We are mostly non-medical personnel most of us having degrees in a social science rather than nursing or medicine. We are , however, required to administer, maintain and keep records of medications that our clients receive as well as accompanying them to various medical appointments, surgeries and procedures in the role of their caregivers and quite often their interpreters. There is a ton of paperwork and a great deal of it is redundant.

So here is what we need. Ipad is perfect, though in my dreams I called it a Medipad. It is small and portable you can take it to medical appointments with you. The doctor can either write a prescription with a stylus or with voice recognition software give it verbally. The doctor`s standing order is entered the same way as we have to have copies of such on hand when we administer the medications. Wireless internet sends the prescription automatically to the pharmacy to be filled and enters the administration times directly on the Ipad (doing away with paper medical adminstration sheets that we have to have for each client and each time a medication is administered) . Some of my clients have six and seven pages of medication administration sheets as they have many medications and these medications may have to be administered three or four times daily. Once programmed an alarm or warning will come up to administer all the medications for this
period in time and staff may have to hit a code key or something that would let the Ipad know that the medications have been administered. It would also be great if there were a link up from each medication to an online database for each of the medications that could tell you information such as possible side effects or even the action or way that the particular medication works in the client`s system.

Once administered the Ipad could automatically subtract the medications from the database so you have a running tally of how many medications have been given and how many pills, drops or whatever still remain. This would be much better for doing med checks that have to be done daily as everything from medication counts to administration sheets are currently printed out on computer and done by hand... I just think of all the unnecessary paperwork and redundant tasks this could cut out.

The App would need to have the ability to track and chart things such as temperatures if someone is ill, bowel movement information and charting as many of our clients suffer chronic constipation related to some of the medications they take; baseline charts for things such as behaviors, PRN usage - able to chart the number of PRN medications needed in a month or over a six month period and be able to give statistical analysis from year to year or even season to season such as over what time period in a year a particular clients starts in manic phase (whether it be over Christmas - or during mid-winter or whenever) to be able to see correlations in behaviors at a glance instead of going back over log notes and records that can take hours and days by hand.

It should also have database capability for things such as personal inventory and appointments, recreations schedules and events.

Hospitals have their own computerized systems for everything, but developers of hardware and software are missing out on a huge market of because there are a ton of organizations for everything from troubled youth to individuals with intellectual disabilities to homes for people with psychiatric difficulties who could better be serving their clients with more efficient computer systems.

I've looked at APPs available now and there is nothing on the market that I've found that will help. So this is an open call for some bright developer to get in on an important but basically untapped market for community based options.

It may not help newspapers to stay afloat, but it could certainly make way for a more paper free system for many organizations dedicated to helping individuals outside of institutions.

You hit the nail right on the head.

Unfortunately the politically left wing favoring bias of ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and PBS is so deeply ingrained in those organizations that they put political correctness above the public's right to know and their shareholders investment. Good business management is put aside to accomodate the left leaning desires of management and their carefully selected staffs.


Fox is like Apple, they have found a niche market that if we are to believe the polls encompasses about 60% of the American public who claim to be Conservatives. Apple likewise plays to the growing technologically aware market that is rapidly growing around the World. Fox and Apple continually provide their markets with new and innovative products which is the way of the new global world that jumps over political boundaries seamlessly to the chagrin of the political elite.

We would never have heard of I-Pod and its revolution in the Music Industry or the words "Fair and Balanced " if Apple and Fox News had never come into existance. Think of American Idol and its incredible ratings, Beck and O'Reilly and then the i-Phone and now the potentially game changing effects the i-Pad is going to have on a variety of markets such as publishing, electronic games, movies,etc. Then look at the dinosaurs you see on as Limbaugh describes them as the "Mainstream Media" .

Old tired habits and ideas die hard but with new ideas and innovation they will eventually die and we are witnessing it.

Also the most recent polls that were given on Fox News Sunday and all the other weekend news shows say 33% of America identfy as Repulican, 38% identy as Democrat, and 28% identify as Independant with 1% undecided. Yet there are people like you apparently and Limbaugh claiming 60% indentify as Teabaggers. Now if that's true there are as many liberal leaning teabagers as there are conservative leaning members so I'm questioning your 60% conservative number can you tell us it's source?

If you call the Entertainment that Beck & O'Riely provides Fair & Balanced you have a very strange definition of those words. Even Fox management admits that it's prime time shows are not intended to be fair and balanced. The Fair & Balanced moniker can barely be applied to Shep Smith and the rest of the streight news programs not to the opinions and comedy of O'Reily and Hannity.
Question what exactly is it you find inovative about Fox they are as Biased as you see the mainstream press to be and deny that bias just as vehementaly as does the other side. What's new about that?

"All other major news outlets are lock-step with left of center reporting, and therefore the field of competitors is large and therefore viewership is diluted."

Based on what information? GE is a left wing organization? The idea that any news in America is news is incorrect. It is mostly corporate propaganda provided by corporations with a corporate agenda. The same corporations control the government. One example: even PBS which used to be slightly left of center has become corporate and far right wing. Recently the show on health care dropped the fact that the US was the only first world country with out free health care from its program. The writer of the show was so out raged he did not allow his name to be associated with the program. The US has fallen way behind Europe as far as life style and quality of life for individuals who are not in the upper 1 percent of wealth. If you want news watch the French channel on your Dish.

Tim

I agree to some extent with you Ted. It's very difficult for the networks including Fox to be anything other then what there Corprate Owners want them to be. But I disagree in what the precieved agenda of what those corprate owners is. In my opinion it is not to protect the politcal interests of the owners but rather it is to make as much money for as low a cost as possiable. They could care less about the public service aspect of news or for that matter they are egarly willing to scrafice quality for cost reductions. Investgative reporting, government agency reporting, real fact based politcal reporting have all been eliminated in the rush to the bottom of the cost curve.

God I hope your wrong! What would be the inevitable outcome of your vision is that 90% of America would read or view only those news sources that agree with there idelogical/politcal/religous/ or other bias. Never once being exposed to other points of view there bias's would become more and more ingrained and America would become totally unable to see the value of centrism and compromise. Your example of Fox/MSNBC are examples of just that sort of biased and mostly valueless news sources.

The success of America circa 1950 - 1990 can to a signficant degree be attributed to a unque in American histroy, sense of community and Amercanism that can largely be attrbuted to the fact that the facts people used to understand current events were shared by all Americans. Because. They came from a limited number of sources. The 3 networks, AP, UPI, and there local newspaper. This allowed for a commonly held place of reference when problems had to be solved.

Now I understand that there were problems with that system (minorities were ignored which to a large part feed the racial unrest of the 60's for one example). We cannot and should not try to go back to such a limited system. But instead of encouraging people to read/view there own bias's we need to do everthing posdiable as a socity to encourage people to sample a broad spectrum of ideas and bias's. This canbe done but it takes educational systems that encourage/require it. And news distribution that makes it harder rather then easier to limit ones access to differing points of view.

How about the Apple store acts as that aggregation with an iTunes like push with the news organizations?