In those old episodes of Star Trek, it wasn’t unusual to see Dr. “Bones” McCoy waving his handheld tricorder around his patient to quickly detect diseases. No waiting for lab tests. Just instantaneous results. A dream for doctors and patients alike. Of course, that’s just science fiction from the 23rd century and has no bearing on 2010. Or does it?
Just this past December, Yale University scientists published a study in Nature Nanotechnology outlining how their latest project works. It’s a portable paperback-book-sized biomarker detector that, within 20 minutes, can diagnose an illness by detecting biomarkers in a sample of blood.
“Doctors could have these small, portable devices in their offices and get nearly instant readings,” Dr. Tarek Fahmy, a biomedical engineer at Yale University, told the UK’s Telegraph. “They could also carry them into the field and test patients on site.”
This tricorder-like technology could be years away from hitting the streets, but there is yet another device that many nephrologists already have in their pockets: the smartphone. Dr. McCoy may scoff at them, but whether it is an iPhone, a Blackberry or anything made by Google, these pocket-sized minicomputers can provide a wealth of practical information and help for nephrologists.
Usefulness
“Whether in your office, a clinic, or the hospital, the ability to check drugs and dosages instantly at the point of care results in better patient care and can sometimes be lifesaving,” Andrew E. Craig, MSN, FNP-C, wrote in a October 2009 article on Medscape about smartphones and physicians.
In the article, Craig defines a smartphone as a cell phone that can add third-party software. “In addition to running medical software programs that can help you, smartphones can play videos, take pictures, and play music.”
However, it is the third-party applications—colloquially known as apps—that set smartphones apart. “There’s an app for that” has become the ubiquitous tagline given to the tens of thousands of apps that exist on Apple’s iTunes store. Everything from restaurant locators, news wires and weight loss trackers. More than one billion apps have been downloaded from iTunes, and the advent of BlackBerry’s AppWorld and sites for other smartphones have whet the appetite for the legions of fans.
However, physicians have much different needs for smartphone apps than most people. “I think what people don’t want are textbooks on their phones,” said Vancouver, Canada, nephrologist Daniel Schwartz, MD. “They want quick snippets of information or to be able to access tools that they would otherwise not be using. It doesn’t help to have a great tool that sits on your desktop computer when you’re in the emergency department or in the wards seeing your patients. It doesn’t help to have a great clinical support tool on paper in your coat. What they like is stuff that is very practical, very succinct, provides a brief piece of information that you can actually apply clinically, and that’s always in your pocket because you have your phone anyways.”
The 34-year-old Schwartz works in a multi-physician, multi-site, full nephrology practice, and regularly uses his smartphone when seeing patients. There is some concern initially, he said. “Patients could say ‘Why is he looking things up?’ ‘Doesn’t he know this?’ But I get absolutely the reverse. By using technology like this people are impressed that I admit my limitations, I recognize when I need more detailed assistance, that I know how to find those tools and that I can come up with information that I couldn’t come up with even if I had perfect memory.”
Rise of the Smartphones
In 2009, the number of physicians using smartphones surged to 64 percent, according to healthcare market research company Manhattan Research’s study focused on physician adoption, use, and impact of the Internet and other technologies.
In fact, the number of physicians using iPhones more than doubled in the past year alone.
Survey results indicate that physicians’ increased reliance on smartphones is not cannibalizing Internet usage on computers. Rather, physicians are spending more time online overall and are using both computers and smartphones to access to the most up-to-date online medical and pharmaceutical resources at a variety of points throughout the day.
Additionally, smartphone-using physicians are an important group to take note of for strategy planning, especially for brand teams looking to leverage the evolving physician media mix in building relationships with their target audiences.
“Physicians have always been advanced in terms of their mobile use,” said Monique Levy, senior director of research at Manhattan Research, “Nevertheless, growth in smartphone ownership in the last year is remarkable. Mobile is delivering on its promise to allow doctors to be ‘always on’—which is partly why so many doctors say the Internet is essential to their practice.”
Manhattan Research also predicted that physician smartphone use will increase to 81 percent penetration in two years. “By 2012, all physicians will walk around with a stethoscope and a smart mobile device, and there will be very few professional activities that physicians won’t be doing on their handhelds. Physicians will be going online first for the majority of their professional needs and will be regularly pulling online resources into patient consultations,” Levy said. “Understanding the shifts that are occurring is essential for manufacturers, especially as many are reevaluating their sales model overall at this time.”
