Wolters Kluwer migrates 32 medical publications to iPad : Where's legal publishing?

Wolters Kluwer, one of the largest publishers in the world, and a big player in the legal publishing arena, has migrated 32 of its medical journals onto the iPad. This per Marc Iskowitz at Medical Marketing and Media.

The reason is the growing number of doctors and consumers using an iPad and advertisers wanting to reach them, particularly doctors.

In 2011, already more than 80% of US physicians owned a smart phone and, by now, an estimated 60% also use an iPad, while at least 40% of US doctors claim to go online during patient consultations, mostly with smart phones (Manhattan Research).

And among the general population, Google predicts that in 2012, for the first time ever, there will be more smart phone shipments than PC shipments in the US.

Mobile platforms are tailor-made for healthcare. “Mobile offers tremendous contextual cues that can connect with consumers in retail, in physician offices and throughout the day to help direct them to Rx brands and manage their health,” notes Martin O’Brien, partner at Rosetta.

The iPad opens up further possibilities for physicians, allowing them to show images and video clips to patients, and to more easily write clinical notes and check patient records.

It would only seem to be a matter of time that legal publications be migrated to the iPad. Already 30% of lawyers use an iPad and the iPad represents a wonderful tool not only for receiving legal information, but also engaging a lawyer’s target audience for business development.

ALM does not appear to have a clear digital plan though and LexisNexis’ alleged failure to invest in technology combined with its parent, Reed Elsevier taking subscription price hits with the growth of open access, has some in the UK financial community calling for its sale.

It’s possible that legal blogs, and the curation of such content, will lead the legal publishing vertical to the iPad.

We already have legal blogs on the LexBlog Network being showcased on Flipboard, with a number of posts on the network being called out as ‘Popular on Flipboard’ each day. We have law reviews moving from print to blogs. With the legal profession moving to mobile versus PC’s and the growing use of iPad’s why not all law reviews on iPad, maybe Flipboard.

It may take a little longer for legal publishing to move to the iPad than medical publishing, but we’ll get there.