IDG News Service - Smartphones and tablet PCs are poised to play a greater role in health care as doctors and patients embrace the mobile Internet, panelists at a mobile health technology conference in Boston said last month.
In a poll of 2,000 U.S. physicians by Manhattan Research LLC, 71% of the respondents said that a smartphone is essential to their practice, and 84% agreed that the Internet is critical to their jobs.
"Physicians are opportunistic in finding ways to improve efficiency," said Monique Levy, an analyst at Manhattan Research. Smartphones allow doctors to check e-mail, use mobile applications and surf the Web; they also support collaboration between physicians and patients, she said at the World Congress Summit on mHealth.
Doctors can use a device like a tablet to pull up patient information during a consultation and then use it to, for example, show a patient how disease spreads or how curvature of the spine occurs. It may be easier to share information that way than it is with a PC.
Apple Inc.'s iPhone is popular with many young doctors, and there are signs that the iPad tablet has a future in health care.
Kaweah Delta Health Care District in Visalia, Calif., already has 25 company-owned iPads and expects that number to grow to 100 in the next few months, according to Nick Volosin, director of technical services. In addition, he said that about 50 doctors have bought iPads themselves.
This version of this story was originally published in Computerworld's print edition. It was adapted from an earlier version that first appeared on Computerworld.com.
Free Insider GuideCopyright © 1994 - 2012 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Computerworld Inc. is prohibited. Computerworld and Computerworld.com and the respective logos are trademarks of International Data Group Inc.
