Thanks to a newly built software application (or “app”), the Journal can now be downloaded and read in an issue format on the iPad. The app is designed as an issue-based reader, meaning that it allows downloads of the full text of single issues, including figures and tables, beginning with the first issue of 2012.
In addition to the full text of the articles in an issue, the iPad Edition includes the audio summary, audio interviews, and the full-text audio for Clinical Practice articles. New Videos in Clinical Medicine can be viewed, as can the questions in each issue for continuing medical education credit. The slide sets of figures and tables can be displayed on the iPad, and there are links to supplementary content. Because of technical restrictions imposed by the device makers and software developers, our interactive graphics, the Interactive Medical Cases, and supplemental videos are not available in the iPad Edition, since they do not work on the device.
Through iTunes, nonsubscribers can purchase an iPad-only monthly subscription, but subscriptions purchased through Apple’s iTunes Store give access only to new issues as they become available on the iPad and not to full content on the NEJM website.
It was just 2 years ago that the major new tablet computers became available. Already they are accelerating the changes in communication and learning in the medical world — once a world defined largely on paper. Now we are in a hybrid environment with an exciting, sometimes dizzying, array of options for digital information delivery.
