Think the iPad is just for e-mail, eMagazines and Angry Birds? Even before the anticipated release of iPad3 very shortly with a higher resolution monitor, the iPad has been credited with helping to save a man's life. 

Still think it couldn't work for digital pathology?  Read an eSlide, make an eDifference? Get the right diagnosis for the right patient at the right time?

Still think Pathology 2.0 doesn't have a place along side Medicine 2.0?

Keep reading...

The world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota has been issuing iPads to physicians for a while, and now one of the Apple tablets is credited with helping to save the life of a man who suffered an arterial blockage at the facility.

As reported in the Post-Bulletin newspaper, 48-year-old Andy McMonigle was working out with his cycling club at the clinic's Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center when he began to feel intense pressure in his arm. McMonigle has a history of heart trouble, so he immediately went to the locker room and asked a man for help. That man was Mayo Clinic internal medicine resident Dr. Daniel Leuders, who stayed by the side of McMonigle and yelled loudly for assistance.

Two other Mayo residents (brothers Daniel and Christopher DeSimone) were literally just around the corner, so when they arrived Leuders reached into his backpack and pulled out his iPad. Within seconds, Leuders was connected to the Mayo's electronic medical record system, where he was able to pull up McMonigle's medical history.

The history showed that McMonigle had a heart stent installed after a previous heart attack four years ago, which made the physicians suspect that he was suffering from a blockage in the stent. When an ambulance crew arrived, Leuders and the other physicians held the iPad record of McMonigle's previous EKG alongside the strip chart that was being printed in real time. What they saw further confirmed their suspicions about the blockage.

The physicians made a choice based on the EKG records that probably saved McMonigle's life. Rather than wait upwards of three hours to run a blood test to verify the clotting, the doctors rushed McMonigle to the cardiac catheterization lab where a team (alerted by activating an emergency code) was waiting. They removed the clot from his artery, which was about 90 percent blocked.

Within three days, McMonigle was released from the hospital and after four more days, he was working out again at the Healthy Living Center.