Stanford medical and Master of Medicine students will receive iPads

UPDATE – 08/05/10: The official announcement is now live. Scope contributor Stesha Doku is quoted in the release:

“Pretty much this is a perfect tool for what I need to do,” said Stesha Doku, a 23-year-old, second-year Stanford medical student from North Carolina who recently bought an iPad. “I use it for reviewing slides from last year, for saving everything in one place. I probably won’t use my laptop in class anymore.”

* * *

08/02/10:

There has been a great deal of conversation about our medical and Master of Medicine students receiving iPads. It’s true: The school plans to provide all first-year medical and Master of Medicine students with a 32 GB WiFi iPad.

The rationale for the decision, which is also outlined on the eStudent pages, includes the following considerations:

• Student readiness: Our students already have considerable familiarity and facility with educational technologies, and this creates new opportunities for efficient, mobile, and innovative learning.
• The flexibility of iPad technology: The iPad allows students to view and annotate course content electronically, facilitating advance preparation as well as in-class note-taking in a highly portable, sharable and searchable format.
• Access to information/Information Literacy: Students will be able to easily access high-quality information at any place, at any time (for example, images from textbooks on digital course reserve, image databases, journal articles, Lane Library’s various search tools, etc.).
• “Going green”: Replacing printed syllabi with PDF’s is in line with the Sustainable Stanford initiative, which aims to build sustainable practices into every aspect of campus life.

We’ll share more about this program soon.

Related: Australian doctors and nurses to be given iPads, California hospital to test iPads for reading X-rays, vital signs, An iPad rounds in the emergency department and CIO’s thoughts on the iPad’s role in medicine