Kindle in health education and clinical practice

Many of you may be aware of Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader, a product which has received a lot of attention lately. If not, here’s the lowdown: its a sleek, lightweight device which uses a paper-like display for reading electronic versions of books. You can download thousands of books from Amazon’s ever-expanding Kindle bookstore directly from the device and start reading within about 60 seconds. And, though the device is billed as an e-book reader, you are also able to download newspapers, some websites, and blogs as well.

So, what kinds of applications does the Kindle have for our healthcare community? There hasn’t been a lot of research done in this area yet, but there are some interesting commentaries and opinions online. If you’re interested, you might consider checking out the following:

• Life as a Healthcare CIO – CIO and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School John Halamka’s blog has multiple informative posts on the device, including one on implementing Kindle support for all educational resources at the school
• Thoughts on reading the New England Journal of Medicine and reference texts from PatrickMD.net
• The Dental Technology Blog from the editor of Dental Products Report magazine has a number of posts about the Kindle

If you’ve used the Kindle for health education or in clinical practice, we’d like to hear about your experiences.  You are welcome to share your own thoughts in the comments section below.