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Amazon’s Kindle pulled the attention of the market to e-readers. There are two promising technologies currently in the market; electronic ink (e-ink) and electronic paper. E-ink provides black and white displays. I myself was a skeptical of this technology. But after holding Kindle 2 in my hand, I stand beside those who admire this technology. In the past, I could not imagine the ease of reading off e-ink screens. But, reading off my Kindle 2 is pretty close to reading off paper. Wikipedia page on e-reader mention other devices using this technology. (Including the new large screen Kindle DX).

Electronic paper is developed by Fujitsu. This provides color. Yes, color. The devise is called FLEPia.

In my view there are two points that still need to be solved for these devices to be adapted in medicine:

1. Refresh rate. This is how fast pages change. Because of how these technologies work, flipping pages takes much more than expected. Clinicians are as others intolerant to the time it takes to flip pages back and forth. When, I read a book on the kindle I do no usually need to flip pages fast, but when I do need to do this it is painful.

2. Data entry. Although E-readers may only need to be used as data display devices, some sort of data entry is very useful. If this feature is available, we will not need PCs in patient care areas. Kindle offers a keyboard that is not useful for typing more than few words. FLEPia and the long awaited Plastic Logic e-ink reader offer sensitive screens which you can write on directly.

In short, at last I see technologies that can really replace paper medical records. The readability (which includes the screen size), weight (which includes portability) and battery life are features that have never been offered by previous technologies. The faster the two issues of slow refresh rate and difficult data entry are solved the faster these technologies will replace paper medical records completely.