ACGME Smartphone Utilisation Survey

Smart phones usage amongst health care professionals is rapidly rising. It also been noted that there is a similar rapid adoption of smart phones and mobile tablets amongst many medical residents and other studying health professionals.

A recent study has recently just been published in the Journal of Medical systems which consists of a survey of 8355, surveys which were sent out for distribution amongst various faculty fellows and house staff. Approximately 3000 responses were received from the survey.

The ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) found that greater than 85% of respondents use a smart phone, and the most popular was the iPhone with 56% responding as such. Medical apps were commonly used, with drug reference apps being the most commonly used type of application. Medical calculators, coding and billing apps were also popular.

Another key finding was that the most requested types of apps were text books and reference materials (55% of respondents), treatment algorithms (46%) and general medical knowledge (43%).

We see from this survey that the medical smart phone and mobile technology is a rapidly expanding area, and we believe that this rapid extension needs to be guided with an evidence base. Surveys such as this are important in providing a baseline statistics; and drives further research on the accuracy and utility of these applications which are now increasingly being relied upon.

The original article is available via Pubmed