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Valley businesses take note of iPad’s workplace applications
The Vindicator (Youngstown)
Photo
Michael Capito, right, gives a presentation on the benefits of using an iPad in business to Nick Liakaris, left, and Bill Axiotis, both of Warren and owners of The Mocha House.
By Karl Henkel
Shirley Christian is tired of lugging around stacks of papers and legal pads.
So Christian, a medical malpractice defense attorney for the Harrington, Hoppe & Mitchell firm in Salem, has started condensing her documents into the latest creation of the digital revolution, a 9.5-by-7.5-inch media tablet: the iPad.
She’s already used her tablet for litigation and in depositions and said soon, she’d like to take her iPad into the courtroom during a trial.
“If I use it at trial, I’ll use it with demonstrative evidence like pictures,” she said.
Christian isn’t alone in her newfound use of technology.
In fact, Brett Burney, a legal technology consultant, estimated a few hundred lawyers in the Northeast Ohio area now use iPads.
“Documents are the lifeblood,” he said. “That’s how we communicate. To have the ability to carry those on us at all times, it makes a huge difference.”
Burney said it lessens the load, literally, and can allow an attorney to search hundreds of PDF documents with a simple text search instead of rummaging through stack after stack of paper.
How did legal professionals get hooked on iPads?
Burney speculated many received the media tablets as gifts for personal use but quickly determined that much like laptops, they could intermingle easily with work life.
It was never Apple’s intention to infiltrate the business world with its first-generation iPad, released last April, but with the debut of iPad 2, the California-based company has begun to direct its attention in that very direction. It estimated 80 percent of Fortune 100 companies have tested or implemented the iPad.
Nearly 18 million media tablets were shipped in 2010, 10 million of those in the last three months alone, according to Massachusetts-based International Data Corp. Most were Apple’s iPad (15 million in nine months) or Samsung’s Galaxy Tablet.
Michael Pontikos, an advertising and marketing instructor at Youngstown State University, said Apple won’t need to do much to continue pressing into businesses, with the exception of adding more applications for business use.
There are more than 65,000 iPad-specific applications, or apps, and they cover tools for almost any line of work. One booming classification of apps is in medicine, where doctors and hospitals have started to use iPad to track and update patient records.
Speech pathologists are using them to help their patients communicate. With a starting cost of $499, it is often a cheaper — though not always more effective — alternative to some of the more expensive equipment normally used.
The prospect of helping patients while saving money has some, such as Andrea Moore, owner and speech-language pathologist of Beyond Expectations in Boardman, considering purchasing the device.
Moore recently attended an Ohio Speech Language Hearing Association convention, where she saw other pathologists using iPads in place of other expensive equipment, such as augmentative alternative communication, or AACs.
Moore estimated those devices, which include special communicators for those with difficulties speaking, can cost more than $7,000. The app ProLoquo2Go, which has close to 8,000 text-to-speech symbols, costs $189.
Judie Pecorelli, supervisor of the speech-language pathology department at ValleyCare Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland, said her staff uses iPads, mostly for outpatients, and the apps generally aren’t as sophisticated as AACs, but their portability is second to none.
Hospitals and medical facilities can often front the money to buy iPads, but Michael Capito, a Warren-based business-to-business consultant with MJ Marketing Consultant Services, said small businesses in the Youngstown area still lags in media-tablet usage compared with other regions he’s seen, such as South Carolina and Florida.
Capito attributed it to the weak economy in the Valley.
“At $499 for the entry level, that’s a huge commitment on your business,” he said. “And you’re probably going to have to buy more than one.”
But Capito said for the price, it’s worth it to businesses, especially those trying to present proposals or product plans.
“In the old days, you had a bulky laptop with a projection screen,” he said. “It was an intimidation factor.”
He said for one-on-one meetings, clients tend to pay attention more when shown information on an iPad, because the handheld device is interactive.
And because the device is easily portable, Capito said its use will percolate as consumers look for more lightweight, battery-efficient, multidimensional devices.
Media tablets have also begun saturating classrooms. John F. Kennedy High School in Warren recently announced it will give each incoming freshman an iPad beginning this fall, and Joshua Dixon Elementary School in Columbiana already uses iPads with first-graders.
“This is the future,” Capito said. “Either get with it or get out of the way.”