It would not be so much written in house. What I see is a some company jumping on board and designing a tablet marketed for hospitals and those needs. Chances are good the current iPad is massive over kill in terms of hardware. Reduce the flash memory, use weaker CPU ect reduce cost. Chances are good that the cost will be cut in 1/2 in the next few years.
Right now the iPad is really the only game in town but give it a few years that will change. It gives the firms who specialize in this type of product for hositals time to design what they need and then have the physical add on software up and working for anything like that.
Basic story is long term the iPad is over kill in terms of power and as such a waste of money since they have to buy all that extra hardware that they do not need or use.
Actually for the profession you are saying, I could see them wanting more memory to run a few more products. Most now are using desktops with a head set to run the 3D graphics and also to play the movies of the x-rays or cat scans and being able to scrub them. I don't think they would want to skimp and with prices now, I don't see the need to go skimpy. But then again I could be wrong.
I actually think the iPad is under kill for a good majorty of professions and industries they are trying to use it for. Reading an owners manual doesn't really require a lot of horse power, but being able to run a custom app that is pulling from multipal sources and then bringing all that data into a nice interface that the end user can compile and read. That requires a little more horsepower especially if we are talking about custom reports/graphs etc and if they are done in real time.
I dont' know a cooparation would want to spend 300.00 bucks on a product that has limited life span or doesn't really have a warranty attached to it like some of the chines knock offs. That would be my opinion only of course.
What I don't know, is when you deploy the iPad in a corporate envirnment can you take off apps that will not be allowed etc? That I don't know, maybe someone can chime and let us know.
But we shall see what happens.