The iPhone can’t do brain surgery. But it sure can help, according to one doctor, reinforcing this blog’s belief that creative iPhone users will show that the device holds great promise as a business tool – often before tech managers figure that out.

For business users, the biggest advantage of the iPhone over the BlackBerry isn’t the ability to play music or its lack of buttons or its several degrees of cool. It’s the iPhone’s Web browser, which makes the phone function more like a laptop than a handheld.

Dr. Robert Singer is already taking advantage of that iPhone feature. By his own admission a tech geek, the Nashville, Tenn., neurovascular surgeon initially bought an iPhone because he thought it would be a fun device to own. “I was one of the June 29ers,” he tells the Business Technology Blog, referring to the day the iPhone went on sale. But he quickly saw that the browser made it an ideal workplace tool.

Video demo: http://www.youtube.com/v/uX_6yIO2bR8

Dr. Singer, who says he performs about 450 surgeries a year, uses his iPhone to access his practice’s electronic medical-records system. Thanks to the iPhone’s browser, he is able to review patients’ X-Rays, angiograms and medical histories while in the operating room. (Click on the video to the left for a demonstration.) He was never able to do this with his BlackBerry, he says; instead, he would review a patient’s file in his office the night before a surgery. Not only does the iPhone let him go into surgery fresher, he also can see updated information. Earlier this week, for example, he changed the way he performed a back operation based on notes from an old surgery that had been added to a patient’s electronic record shortly before he made his first cut.