Comments on: Dell Latitude 10: Viable Healthcare Tablet Option?

By: Ed Tittel

Ed Tittel — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:14:12 +0000

Kevin:As usual, you bring something valuable to our dicussions. And Dell is making much of its enhanced security capabilities (secure storage, secure communications, and dual-factor authentication) to position the Lat10 as “ready for HIPAA.” This does matter in general for tablet use on the job, but particularly where privacy and confidentiality mandates (and attached liability and penalties) apply.Thanks for posting,–Ed–

By: Ed Tittel

Ed Tittel — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:11:57 +0000

Dear Anthony:You make a very good point. I do understand, however, that Dell does offer a case/keyboard combination that’s designed to provide “crash/drop protection” for the Lat10. I would have to guess that this would help with your bumper request. As for stylus, I see on the order page that the devices uses a Wacom digitizer and thus works fine with a Wacom Active stylus, available as a $35 add-on to the order (you can buy them more cheaply on the open market, BTW, if you shop around carefully).–Ed–

By: KevinBeaver

KevinBeaver — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 19:53:52 +0000

Anything could be considered a viable option in healthcare today given all the money Obama's spending on making us healthier, no? It's funny, I remember when the Palm and similar PDAs came out back in the late 1990s and evolved in the early 2000's. They were all the rage in healthcare: "Look at what we can do to improve patient care, telemedicine...blah, blah, blah". Since then, I've unfortunately spent a lot of time in the ER as well as in oncology and cardiology offices helping tend to sick parents and have seen very minimal adoption of tools like this tablet. I think such technologies would be wonderful for healthcare given their utility and security features - especially for those HIPAA covered entities who've learned the hard way that their Notice of Privacy Practices ≠ HIPAA compliance. It'll be interesting to see how healthcare IT evolves in the next decade. Hopefully it'll be for the best.

By: anthonymaw

anthonymaw — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:43:35 +0000

The most obvious shortcoming is the lack of thick rubber corner bumpers. For any device intended for industrial use, it is highly likely that it will be dropped at some point. A stylus would be useful too considering medical professionals often have to wear nitrile gloves which may not be sensed by the touchpad.