by Veronica Combs

There are about eight halls of exhibitors at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show and I swear at least one of them was full of iPhone cases and nothing else. I just bought a Droid Razr and I hate the Otter Box that I bought with it, so I was quite disgusted that I couldn’t find an alternative in this sea of cases.

Anyway, there were several practical iPhone and iPad accessories at the show, mixed in with the Spider-Man and jeweled options. Here are three that would keep your Apple device safe no matter what job you have in healthcare:

LifeProof

This booth had several small stages with a chef, a firefighter, and a doctor — each one explaining the merits of this protector. It is a thin, polycarbonate frame that goes around the device.

It’s waterproof up to 6.6-feet deep for 30 minutes and keeps out dust. The nice part about the waterproof seal is that it goes around the edge of the screen, so you can still touch it directly. Water can touch the screen but not get inside the device or touch any of the plugs.

LifeProof also has two straps that seem perfect for a nurse or doctor. One fits diagonally across the back of the iPad and the other is a shoulder strap.

The Joy Factory

C-clamp Mount from The Joy Factory

This company also had a great case and an awesome accessory. To illustrate how strong the case is, people were shooting bean bags at it. If a dangling device suffered a direct hit, it splashed down into the tank beneath. Cool factor? The aXtion pro case floats. The case goes on sale in April.

The company also makes BubbleShield bags with a big ring at the top. They’re like stylish Ziploc bags for your iPhone — perfect for those days when you are canoeing down the river.

The accessory is a wheelchair mount for iPads and other tablets. The arm attaches with a C-clamp designed to fit around a tube or other curved surface. The tablet snaps into the protective hard-shell tray, which in turn screws to the mounting brackets. A magnet connects the tablet to the arm of the mount.

Barry Lieberman of Joy Factory said the company donated some of the mounts to soldiers at a VA hospital in Texas and that scientists in the spinal research lab at the University of California Irvine were using the mounts as well.

Joy Factory was recognized at the show as a 2013 Design and Engineering Awards honoree.

Nanotech protection

If you want an invisible cloak of protection, I found two options: one is available now, the other is still coming to America. For readers everywhere else in the world, you’re in luck.

Liquipel is the one you can get now. You can buy a device treated with this self-sealing
nanocoating that protects your phone if it falls into water. The entire phone — guts and all — is coated, so no more rice treatments if your phone falls into the toilet. Currently, you can buy Asus, Samsung, Motorola and HTC products as well as Apples.

DryWired is also a nanocoating, but it protects against bacteria and corrosion as well as water. The treatment has been applied to printed circuit boards, cellphones, tablets, medical electronics, aircraft foam, plastics and cloth without changing the look or feel of the product. That was the “oooo” demonstration at the booth: “Here, touch this tissue, feels normal, right? But look, it doesn’t disintegrate in water.”

DryWired licenses the technology from EuroPlamsa, a Belgian company. The Los Angeles company is working with manufacturers to get electronics and other components treated with the coating right in the factory.