Good Morning,

 

Thank you to everyone who responded to my e-mail regarding iPads and how they are being utilised. Your responses were really helpful and will greatly assist me in taking my project forward. I have collated the responses I received below:

 

Loaning out iPads

 

“We have been lending out iPads for the past year. We use an equipment loan form. We do not ask for a deposit and have not had any issues with non return. We lend for one week at a time with up to four renewals before they have to be returned. We do have fines of £1 a day so had few problems with late iPads. We lend them with links to the library resources and with apps such as Dynamed though they do have to sign up themselves for this to fully utilise it.”

 

“We loan them out for a week at a time, get them to sign a form (e.g. if lost they’ll replace etc), we don’t make them pay a deposit (we didn’t want to make this a barrier – it’s proved to have worked and people are good at returning the iPads on time so far!).”

“We are loaning them out to all staff in the hospital. We’re not loaning them out to students yet as we don’t have enough and we want to encourage use on wards and in clinics first.”

 

“Loans are arranged with my colleague...I think she lets people use the iPad only within the Library, and they leave their University ID card as deposit.”

 

Use of iPads

 

Testing and accessing Electronic Resources/Apps

 

“We have also used for testing apps.  No intention of lending, but for reviewing apps and testing library subscription material e.g. Science Direct journals it has already been useful...Must admit it is useful for testing journal access off the NHS network and we have been known to use it to access things when the network is slow, but we have external wi-fi.”

 

“So far we've only used it in the Library to let a user connect to his own e-mail that was blocked by the Trust so not exactly what we had in mind but it did make him happy!!”

 

“We have iPads and advertise them as a means of browsing e-books and e-journals.  As yet we haven't lent them to anyone but library staff.”

 

“We have two ipads here... for use in the library only we’ve added shortcuts for e-journals, the catalogue, Dynamed, etc.”

 

Using iPads for Training Purposes

 

“We're generally going to be using them for training purposes because a lot of the medical students ...are now issued with them when they start their course. We're currently looking which apps are going to be useful to download - there are lists of useful medical apps. I'm also planning to use it when I go out and meet people in the community, for training purposes. It’ll be easier to carry around than a laptop.”

 

“The main purpose is for staff training.  None of our staff are familiar with the technology and more of our users are coming with queries...Third reason is for training – as the...students will shortly be coming with their own iPads.  It expands our ability to deliver training on the devices/interfaces they use.  Not yet used it in this light, as we only got it last month.”

 

“We keep one iPad in the Library for both reference and to be used on our outreach visits.”

 

“I have just purchased one, but plan to use it for demos and small group sessions – mainly for users who also have one and want to see what medical apps are worth using.”

 

Using iPads in a clinical setting

 

“We have recently purchased IPads to source knowledge out to the clinical areas.”

 

“The iPad with the clinical team is used for them to access Point of Care resources actually at the point of care, and I do believe the bought a fitting to allow them to use it with a projector to do case presentations.  They also use it to access our rapid search and synthesis service (clinical questions re patients during rounds).”

 

I.T. problems/support

 

A number of respondents commented on technical problems/issues they encountered when setting up iPads:

 

“The difficulty is that although I bought them following NHS procurement procedures via our comms dept (they are both wifi and 3g - so are classed alongside mobile phones) they are not supported by IT.  So I had to set them up myself (and since iTunes is inaccessible I had to do it at home, and since you need an iTunes account I had to set one up using some of my own details - consequently I didn’t give any of them the login for it).  I preloaded a lot of the apps I thought they would use as well as some bookmarks.

IT are working on how to support such devices because the number in the org is growing but the main concern is that they are not managed appropriately.  Despite the fact that IT don’t officially support them they did work with us to get them on the wifi network.”

 

“Make sure you get Trust IT to support you as they will be able to provide you with Wireless access. They will advise you on security. We have set the same pass code on each iPad and our own iTunes account for updating the devices.”

 

Thanks again to everyone who responded to my e-mail.

 

Kind Regards

 

Jane    

 

 

Outreach Librarian

Trust Library and Information Resource Centre

Mayo Building

Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust

Stott Lane

Salford

M6 8HD

 

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Tel: 0161 206 8411

 

 

Infoshots

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