One in ten doctors recommends…an iPhone! Yes, you heard that right. One in ten doctors agrees that the iPhone is a good health tool. For what? The PDR. Recommending drugs. Or at least preventing drug interactions. Or both.
Read it here from the WSJ:
“When Apple first started promoting applications for the iPhone, CEO Steve Jobs touted physician reference guides and other medical programs as an important category of software for the device. At least a tenth of the doctors in the U.S. concur with that view.”
Wait there’s more: 75,000 doctors have installed some version of the iPhone app, Epocrates on their phone, an application that allows you to look for drug interactions and more. And this doesn’t even include medical students, nurses or other health professionals.
Who knew the iPhone could be so handy? Well, Steve Jobs, for one. And it turns out a good-sized portion of the medical community as well. But why if they will use the iPhone as a PDR will they not use the other medical devices in the hospital to prevent drug interactions? Or is it just this tech-savvy 10% that are the early adopters of this technology?
My guess is that it is the latter, and they will have to drag along the rest of their colleagues kicking and screaming. Maybe they will have to convince them that it would be cool to get an iPhone.
Summer Johnson, PhD