This might be a bit awful of me, but after John Trigg’s comment about the iPad as a sample tray (and we know he was being tongue-in-cheek, there), but that’s what I think of EVERY time someone mentions “iPad” and “laboratory” in the same sentence (http://theintegratedlab.com/2010/04/will-the-ipad-replace-your-paper-lab-notebook/ ) and then I snicker.
Just this past week, one of the software vendor’s consultants at my customer was sitting around thinking and suddenly turned to me and said, “You know, I bet there are some great uses for the iPad in a laboratory” to which I immediately replied, “Yes, it’s a great sample tray!,”and then I snickered. I just can’t stop perpetuating that joke. I guess that shows the inane level my sense of humor dives to.
But I might have to stop this silliness. In the LIMS/Laboratory Informatics group in LinkedIn, I just saw the title “The iPad Makes its Way Into the Research Lab” to which I struggled but did hold-off making a post just to point-back to John’s “sample tray” posting ( http://www.linkedin.com/newsArticle?viewDiscussion=&articleID=136348746&gid=36640 ).
And, to make things yet more serious, there’s a real application really using the iPad ( http://blog.biodata.com/2010/06/13/the-ipad-makes-its-way-into-the-research-lab/ ).
Also, to be fair to John, he did also make another posting about the iPad where he did not use the term “sample tray” anywhere (drat!) (http://theintegratedlab.com/2010/05/the-ipad-in-the-laboratory/ ).
And so, as we get new technologies, there is usually eventually someone that discovers a great use for it. And, when that doesn’t happen, the technology doesn’t take off and disappears from our horizon, regardless how “cool” we might have thought it was when it came out.
Sadly the sample tray comment isn’t a joke – experience with tablets in the lab is that you’re giving scientists a nice stable flat tray and they do what any normal person would do when they need to move stuff around the lab… the physical object just has those affordances.
There is hope that this won’t happen with the iPad, partly because the physical device is slightly different (that curved back makes it slightly less suited as a tray), but more interestingly because people tend to bond with the iPad more. Right now I’d recommend that companies give iPads to individuals rather than just have a bunch in the lab to use, because that’s going to reduce the damage rate.
As to ELNs, a number of vendors announced iPad-capable ELNs at or near the iPad ship date – I know Rescentris showed something at BioIT World, and our PatentSafe ELN works on the iPad and is at feature-parity with the desktop (see http://www.amphora-research.com/blog/?p=16).
The iPad is already proving useful in the lab, but I think that it’s going to get really interesting as the ecosystem settles down. We’re still at the stage where most apps were written without having seen what other people were doing, so a lot of the UI metaphors are still up in the air.
My bet is that the computing world is going to be very different in a few years – this isn’t just about a new computer form factor, Apple are challenging a lot of assumptions and whenever they’ve done this before, they’ve been right. This might be useful background http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/why-steve-jobs-hates-flash.html
There was a lot of good discussion on this a few months ago on the ELN-focused LinkedIn groups. With your LIMS-centric focus I suspect the iPad will be just as transformative, but in different ways.
Interesting times ahead…
Simon
http://elnblog.com
The applications that will be truly transformative will be those that come from none of our areas, not LIMS, not ELN, not CDS, etc… Usually, transformation comes from the people that take the fresh approach of looking at the product and applying it to the best solution of the problem that it can manage.
Unfortunately, most of us are taking our own application knowledge and applying what we have to a new piece of hardware. We try to force the new product to fit what we already have. In doing so, those of us who are “experts” are sometimes entirely left behind as the paradigms shift because we have become too focused on a specific area rather than the overall problem.
We at BioData (http://www.biodata.com) feel that iPad is the future of ELNs and LIMS. The problem with current digitalized methods of recording research data and results is that there is no room on the bench for them. Now, with the creation of the handheld iPad, researchers can record their results as they happen – at the bench. The iPad is just an example. This is the first time a tablet is very easy to use, with an easy interface and keyboard. BioData is all about easy research management and using the iPad is just demonstrating what can be done with a tablet at the bench.