“One thing we’ve already had a number of doctors ask for is some way of using the iPhone for presentations. If Apple would make available whichever device they plug into the dock connector for their own presentations, it could potentially remove the need to have a laptop for presentations,” says Watson, who says he hopes that Apple will also boost the RAM in iPhones and provide faster flash memory access soon because “the applications that could be produced then would be simply amazing.”

In fact, Watson says he’d love to see Apple develop “a tablet-type device, running OS X iPhone with significantly more processing power.”

Though they’re Mac users at home, MIM iPhone was the MIMvista programming team’s first experience developing software specifically for an Apple platform. The team is now happily working on porting MIMvista’s desktop applications to OS X. Watson and his team are also excited about the new developer features announced for OS X Snow Leopard, primarily, he says, because OpenCL, which will allow graphics processors to handle some of the demanding computing tasks that are normally handed off to CPUs, looks especially compelling.

Med students needn’t break their backs lugging the bound paper version of Netter’s Atlas of Anatomy between classes. Modality makes Netter’s content accessible via iPhone.

 “Modern graphics processors are extremely powerful, but writing programs to take advantage of them are currently very difficult and time-consuming,” Watson says. “We’re looking forward to being able to easily take advantage of some of these features, which we’ll be able to use to help physicians enhance the speed and quality of the patient care they can provide.”

Watson and Williams both expect that as the iPhone hardware evolves, the iPhone will help streamline medical diagnosis and treatment processes.  “The potential is limitless,” says Williams, adding, “We’re all excited to see what Apple will enable us to do next.”