It's hard to overstate the impact Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56, has had on technology for the past 30 years. In hardware, software, communications and design, Apple's contributions have been incalculable – not least in healthcare.

The online reactions last night – with many responses no doubt tapped onto iPhone screens or typed into MacBook Pros – attested to the far-reaching accomplishments of a man many have likened to a modern Thomas Edison.

[See also: Slideshow - Steve Jobs (1955-2011)]

"He changed the way each of us sees the world," said President Obama.

Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra called Jobs "a true visionary."

"In some ways, his death seems like Faustian bargain – revolutionize the world with products beyond our imagination, then die too young," wrote Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO John Halamka, MD.

Chilmark Research analyst John Moore put it simply: Jobs "wanted to make computers actually fun to use."

That's the key. From the start, Apple has made products that people felt they just needed to have – cool and fun and exceedingly useful.

Physicians and clinicians like smart functionality and sexy design as much as anyone. And that's a huge reason why, in barely three years, the iPhone and the iPad – and the dozens of other smartphones and tablets that have followed Apple's lead – have found such a foothold in hospitals and physician practices.

Just this week, at the launch of the new iPhone 4S, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that "80 percent of the top hospitals in the U.S. are now testing or piloting the iPad" – using the device "to access patient records, to review medical images, to administer bedside care."

In a healthcare sector that's taken decades to digitize on a scale comparable to other industries, Apple's mobile devices have been adopted in impressive numbers. The interest from care providers is immense. (Of the stories with my byline on healthcareitnews.com, the three most popular so far in 2011 are all about the iPad.)

The innovations speak for themselves. Many big-name electronic health records vendors have developed iPhone or iPad access capabilities. There's also an increasing number of iPad-native EHRs. The devices have proved their worth from the get-go when it comes to telehealth – and the new iPhone 4S (with its 8 megapixel camera and 1080p HD video capabilities) looks to be even-better suited for remote diagnoses in time-sensitive emergencies. The galaxy of self-monitoring, smoking cessation, fitness and assorted other mHealth apps in Apple's App Store have helped bring about a new era in personal health.

And amazingly, so many of these innovations are on fronts most of us never envisioned.

It's often said – and rightly so – that health IT systems should be deployed carefully, with plenty of input from doctors, nurses and other care providers.

But Jobs, the bold visionary, took the opposite approach. As he said famously: "It isn’t the consumers' job to know what they want."

Its a testament to his genius that so many people were happy to find that out from him.

Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg wrote about Jobs that, "the dominant tone he struck was optimism and certainty."

As the U.S. continues the herculean task of transforming the healthcare system for the 21st century, it would be wise to follow his example.

See the next page for a selection of Apple coverage from the Healthcare IT News archives.