McGraw-Hill recently announced the launch of Harrison’s for the iPad, the digital edition of the world’s most influential medical textbook, Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, created exclusively for the world’s most sought after tablet computer, the Apple iPad.

Harrison’s for the iPad was developed in partnership with Inkling, creators of the pre-eminent interactive content platform for the iPad. It leverages the mobility, rich media, and processing power of the iPad to enliven its content, improve speed of reference, and expand the learning experience for clinicians and medical students alike.

The iPad’s state-of-the-art platform and high quality screen resolution enabled the Harrison’s team of editors and contributors to create a new dimension of multimedia embedded in the text. Complete with advanced pedagogical tools, Harrison’s for the iPad brings to life the thought-leading clinical authorship and expertise that has been the hallmark of Harrison’s for more than six decades.

“Harrison’s for the iPad delivers superior, evidence-based medicine into the settings where it is needed most,” said Philip Ruppel, president of McGraw-Hill Professional. “Technology is dramatically changing medical education and how students study and learn and McGraw-Hill is committed to expanding and enhancing our products to meet new needs.”

The entire recently published 18th edition of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine is captured on Harrison’s for the iPad : 450 chapters, more than 4,000 pages, and the contents of the companion DVD. Complete with more than 100 instructional videos, it also includes interactive diagrams, expandable tables, clinical decision trees, and image-based slide shows, all of which can now be intuitively manipulated on the tablet’s touch screen.

Videos incorporated throughout the edition include:

• Step-by-step tutorials from physicians at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women’s Hospital
• The diagnostic approach to neurologic disease, by leading specialists Martin Samuels, MD and Dan Lowenstein, MD, supplement the renowned Harrison’s neurology chapters
• Expert insights and footage from actual patient care in the diagnosis of focal cerebral disorders from Bruce Miller, MD and his team at the UCSF School of Medicine

Harrison’s for the iPad boasts a social learning network built in to the text that enables greater student-to-student and student-to-professor collaboration. As they explore content, students can form study networks, share notes, follow their professors, and create real- time running discussions with other Harrison’s users at medical schools and hospitals around the world.

“Harrison’s for the iPad represents one of the greatest innovations in this textbook’s 60-year history,” said Dan L. Longo, M.D., Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, speaking on behalf of the Board of Editors of Harrison’s Principles of Internal  Medicine. ”The editors are keenly aware that Harrison’s world-class content and thought leadership and Apple’s unprecedented iPad technology have the ability to affect the study and practice of medicine for years to come.”

Harrison’s for the iPad follows Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology, Pharmacotherapy:  A Pathophysiologic Approach by Joseph DiPiro, and more than 50 other McGraw-Hill textbooks on a variety of disciplines developed for the iPad in conjunction with Inkling. It is available through the Inkling webstore at  www.inkling.com/store/principles-of-internal-medicine-dan-longo-18th/ for $199.99, and individual sections can be purchased for $49.99 each.

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Inkling is a digital textbook company started by Mat MacInnis, an American engineer graduated Harvard who worked for Apple. MacInnis writes that the company started with a vision for a better textbook which is interactive, engaging and took advantage of the opportunities afforded by new media like iPad.

But the main clue is not only to reinvent publishing or books but to reinvent the way people learn. Accordingly to this statement, MacInnis and his team came up with idea of reinventing textbook to make them more like computers. The idea predicts that new e-textbooks will be an answer to higher expectations of students to their learning tools.

Recently, Inkling released Version 2.0 of their popular iPad application. The app offers nearly 50 of the world’s most popular undergraduate, business, and medical textbooks. Features of Inkling 2.0 include study groups developed for discussion sessions anywhere with anyone, including professors, friends and experts.

There is an expert in every book who knows the information inside and out. Additionally, the reader has access to discussions and popular comments which are very helpful to grasp the concept. Often the author of the book itself gives notes and can answer questions asked within the book’s interface.

Another extension is an organizer of all your notes, highlights, bookmarks and other links that you create. It also involves notebook. The 2.0 version also includes the integration of Wikipedia and Google for in-book searching beyond the book. Moreover, there is a possibility of purchasing chapters from a textbook from $2.99 per chapter.

The biggest advantage of the Inkling textbooks is the fact that they are designed with interactivity in mind. As an example, biology and anatomy textbook include 3D rendering of bones, muscles and molecules which can be rotated to see all the details from each side. Medical students reported that Inkling’s books are smarter and more intuitive than complicated texts which are currently in use.

The subjects which are not visual, like history for instance, are still a challenge for Inkling designers who must improve to differentiate their products from competition — mainly Kno, Amazon Kindle Textbooks Rental and Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Study.

According to MacInnis, the company is approaching 100 natively-rendered e-books at the moment. MacInnis said that these books make up over 50 percent of the textbooks used in the United States of America.

However, comparing this numbers with over 100,000 books that competitive Kno has scanned for iPad, with similar social media features and basic note-taking most students who are not scientists might choose the better price. What is more, the convenience of having all their receipts from one place cannot also stay without comment.

Inkling can push out a new textbook in about 4 to 6 weeks but to deserve the fast-changing tablet-toting student, MacInnis will have to continue his mission to fix to the format of 21^st century textbook which can fulfill all learning people needs even those expectations that users are not conscious yet.

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